Torpol and Mirbud filed a claim security application after being excluded from a Rail Baltica tender over a 15,000 zł environmental penalty.
Court Decision Excludes Torpol-Mirbud
The claim security application follows a January 19 ruling by the National Appellate Court, which excluded the Torpol-Mirbud consortium from the tender for the reconstruction of a key section of Rail Baltica.
Initially in early November, the Mirbud and Torpol consortium’s offer was selected by PKP PLK as the most advantageous, but following an appeal by the Budimex-PORR consortium to the KIO, the Torpol-Mirbud proposal was ultimately evaluated as the highest.
Rejection Over Minor Penalty Sparks Debate
Crucially, the Torpol-Mirbud offer, which was more advantageous by over 400 million zł in a tender for nearly 5 billion zł, was rejected due to the omission in tender documents of information about a 15,000 zł environmental penalty imposed on Mirbud in 2022.
“In Mirbud’s nearly 40-year activity on the market, we are for the first time in a situation where, despite submitting an offer over 400 million zł cheaper, we were excluded from the tender procedure due to not including information about the penalty in the tender documents,” Paweł Korzeniowski, a member of the board, director for economic and financial affairs at Mirbud S.A., stated.
Consortium Plans Legal Action
Concurrently with the claim security application, Mirbud and Torpol announced they will file a complaint against the KIO’s decision that excluded the consortium from the Rail Baltica reconstruction tender in the coming days.
“We consistently maintain that the failure to provide information about an incidental penalty in the tender documents should not affect the outcome of this procedure. We will take legal steps to defend the contract in which our offer was the most advantageous,” Anna Więzowska, a member of the board, director of the legal department and claims at Mirbud S.A., explained.
Claim Security Filed to Prevent Irreversible Effects
In the submitted application, the Torpol-Mirbud consortium emphasizes that the proposed method of securing claims aims to prevent the irreversible effects that would result from the contracting authority signing a contract with other bidders.
The consortium argues that the penalty amounted to only 15,000 zł, while the maximum possible sanction was 1 million zł, indicating the minimal scale of the violation. They also point out that the penalty expired during the tender procedure before the selection of their consortium’s offer.
