Bidders can play an important role in detecting anticompetitive practices in public procurement by informing the competition authority of a suspicion of anti-competitive agreement between competitors, but also if they are part of such an agreement. However, the leniency policy is a favorable treatment by the Competition Council of the undertakings involved in a cartel, which cooperates with the competition authority to discover these anticompetitive practices. To detect and prevent such practices, there are several tools and indicators that, in practice, use procurement organizations to help combat unfair competition. This is the topic discussed at the Sixth Training for Civil Society Representatives in the framework of the project "Innovative Improvements in the public procurement system of the Republic of Moldova through inclusion, creativity and compliance practices" implemented by IDIS "Viitorul", with the financial support of the European Union.
Viorel Chivriga, director of programs at IDIS Viitorul, claims that anti-competitive practices can be avoided by avoiding communication between bidders. In the case of the market consultation, it is advisable to organize separate meetings with economic operators, to avoid supplying competitive tendering information, opening tenders or communicating results, which could distort competition in subsequent auctions.
The most common anticompetitive practices target fictitious companies (often consulting firms), also called "front-end companies", which are not legal entities created to obtain contracts in non-transparent ways, set up by public officials of the authority contracting parties to issue false invoices and to facilitate the choice of the winner and to create the impression of competition.
Diana Enachi, coordinator of the project, exemplified the auction of auctions through the case of SA "Set-Service" SA, which filed a leniency application with the Competition Council acknowledging that together with the company "Nufăr-Cia" they participated with falsified offers for the purpose of batch splitting within the procurement procedure for the repair of the technological equipment according to the needs of the educational institutions was organized by the Department of Youth Education and Sports, the Ciocana Sector (DETS).
"Trusts in public procurement is an impediment to public procurement, and they appear with the agreement of some officials in the company with economic agents willing to make profits," said Maria Lascov from A.O Concordia.
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