Greek company sues FinMin over national lottery

TIRANA, Sept. 11 – Greece’s Intralot, one of the top companies interested to obtain a licence to organize the first Albanian national lottery has filed a lawsuit against Finance Minister Ridvan Bode over what it calls the predetermined winner of the tender held last July. The Greek company which withdrew from the race because of discriminatory criteria wants the Finance Ministry to make available all official documentation showing the procedures followed in the determination of the licence criteria.
The national lottery process was marred by accusations by several companies who were disqualified from submitting bids and the opposition Socialist Party accusing government of corruption.
The low price, discriminatory criteria set for the participating companies, the taxes the Albanian government will benefit and the monopoly the Austrian company is given for only 3 million euros were some of the most controversial issues accompanying the process.
Only two companies participated in the tender held June 20 after Greece’s Intralot and Turkey’s Inteltek withdrew from the race concerned over the procedures the Albanian government followed and the discriminatory qualification criteria.
The first offer came from the Austrian National Lottery, while the second came from a consortium of three companies, the Italian Lottomatica, the Cypriot GTech and the Czech Synot.
In a letter sent to Finance Minister Ridvan Bode just before the tender, Constantinos Antonopoulos, Intralot’s director, denounced the qualification criteria set for the companies and lack of a price tag “which it says makes the tender more of a present rather than a competition for a higher price.”
“To our great surprise we realized that the evaluation and award criteria do not include the licence fee or any price element whatsoever but instead the fee is fixed at an unreasonably low level for such a promising asset, as evidenced in similar licence awards globally.”
Based on a previous government decision, bidders must had to have 15 years of experience in gambling and 5 years of experience in organizing online lotteries.
As expected, Austrian Lotteries is the preliminary winner of a controversial tender held last June to award a 10-year licence on Albania’s first national lottery. The Finance Ministry says the Austrian company ranked first after the conclusion of the second stage of bids evaluation.