Two civil organizations will approach the prosecutor's office today

Two civil organizations will approach the prosecutor’s office today. The reason is the new contract, prepared by the Ministry of State Administration, for software purchase, which is going to be signed with Microsoft. This was announced yesterday by /Open Projects Foundation /and the civil initiative /Spravedlivost (Justice)./

The signal to the Prosecutor is instigated by the Ministry’s call for tender, which seeks a supplier of 60 000 Microsoft licenses for the needs of the state administration. According to the lawyer of the two organizations, Mr Ivan Gruykin, the announced procedure may be interpreted as a criminal breach of trust, aiming to favour one of the world’s richest people – Bill Gates and his company.

Apart from the Prosecutor, the organizations will approach other authorities as well, namely the Public Internal Financial Control Agency, which according to the Public Tenders Act possesses the power to stop the procedure.

The two organizations are considering how to approach the Commission for Protection of Competition, which is also a controlling authority, but only a participant in the tender has the right to make an appeal.

The order value is about 90 millions of leva, and that makes 1500 per software package – a price which exceeds the market price several times. When announcing the tender Minister Nikolay Vasilev said that he was going to organize a press conference to find out if the officials were able to use free open source software and if he was convinced, he would stop the tender. The deadline for submission of the offers is the 10th of December.