Wireless Media paid 2,000 times more than cost for software deal

Wireless Media signed a 60 million Euro contract with Telekom Serbia for that software.

Brkic said that prosecutors and the Anti-Corruption Agency should immediately investigate the public procurement deal worth seven billion Dinars awarded to businessman Igor Zezelj’s Wireless Media, the state-owned Telekom Serbia and their partners by the Finance Ministry. “I spoke to friends who are in the software business and if they had taken part in the tender their price would be between 30,000 and 60,000 Euro for that software which means that the price is 1,000 to 2,000 times higher than it would be in ordinary circumstances. From that aspect, and this is no longer just a question of the law but of who will call the prosecution and State Audit Institution (DRI) to look into the documents and see what costs 60 million Euro,” Brkic said.

According to him, the next important question is who the companies are that got the deal to design the software. “The consortium consists of one state company which has nothing to do with software production and a private company which has not been involved in software production to date. The question is whether they have the skills and capacities to do this. And because they don’t have the capacities, they hired a foreign company to make the software and they will be the middle men charging a huge commission,” Brkic said.

A different aspect of the deal is what worries lawyer Rodoljub Sabic, a former Commissioner for Information of Public Significance. He warned that confidential personal data has been leaked in the state system. “If we get to a situation in which the data for almost 500,000 public sector employees ends up in the hands of a private company and we don’t know if it has any serious experience in processing personal data, the risk multiplies rapidly,” he said. Sabic added that the Finance Ministry had to draft a feasibility study for public procurement of that magnitude for both security and financial aspects of the deal.