Last week, as part of a criminal case initiated by the European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO) regarding possible fraud in IT procurements for state administration needs, former director of the State Agency for Digital Development (GAČR) Jorens LioPa, owner and head of the "Corporate Solutions" group of companies Aigars Ceruss, and procurement specialist Ainars Biders were detained, reported the Latvian Television program "de facto".
A total of 21 people have been detained, including other officials such as the current head of the State Agency for Digital Development (GAČR) and a member of the board of "Rīgas siltums", as well as executives and employees of several large IT companies and representatives of two auditing firms from the "big four".
At the center of the case initiated by the EPPO and investigated by the Office for Combating Economic Crimes is last year's GAČR procurement worth 1.5 million euros, funded by European Union funds. The winners of this procurement would have the opportunity to influence the further course and results of related public procurements. Following the procurement for "Consulting services and quality control services for software development and documentation", agreements were concluded last autumn with several companies - LLC "Agile & Co", LLC "Corporate Consulting", and auditing firms "Ernst & Young Baltic" and "PricewaterhouseCoopers".
Law enforcement agencies suspect that an organized group illegally conspired to ensure the victory of these companies in the procurement even before the proposals were submitted. It has become known "de facto" that one of the central figures in the case is procurement specialist and frequently engaged independent expert Ainars Biders, who once created the portal iepirkumiem.lv. He developed the technical specification for this procurement, formulating the requirements in such a way that specific companies would win. Then, in subsequent procurements, they could act in the interests of group members or related parties. At the request of the investigation, last Wednesday the court issued a sanction for the arrest of Biders, who at least at that time was also an employee of the Ministry of Transport.
The court issued a similar decision regarding the former director of GAČR, LioPa. While being the director of the agency conducting the procurement, and even after his suspension, he met with the owners and representatives of the colluding companies to negotiate the distribution of work. In turn, on Thursday the court issued a decision to arrest the head of "Corporate Solutions", Aigars Ceruss.
