Brno - A fine of 150,000 crowns for the municipality of the Brno district of Žabovřesky for poorly awarded contracts will be addressed by the Supreme Administrative Court. The municipality will turn to it after the Regional Court in Brno rejected its appeal against the decision of the Office for the Protection of Competition (ÚOHS). The objections raised by the municipality should have been submitted in the second-instance proceedings at the office, and the court could not take them into account, said judge Jaroslav Tesák to ČTK. According to the antimonopoly office, the municipality made mistakes in seven contracts. In 2003 and 2004, it wanted to renovate houses on the streets of Mozolky, Poznaňská, Žižkova, Jindřichova, Kounicova, and Voroněžská. The contracts, worth approximately 45 million crowns, were still offered only to six Brno construction companies. This made it impossible for other interested parties to participate in the competition, the office claims. "The contracting authority must not invite the same bidders to submit offers if such a procedure is not justified by the nature of the contract," said antimonopoly office spokesman Kristián Chalupa. The mayor of the district, Aleš Kvapil, denies any wrongdoing and considers the fine excessively high. "We feel that there are also other options; the office's procedure was, in our opinion, unfair," he stated. The office imposed the same fine last year, but the municipality appealed against it. However, even in the second-instance proceedings, the perspective of the antimonopoly officials did not change, and Žabovřesky therefore turned to the regional court. There, however, they raised objections that had not been mentioned before the antimonopoly office. "The court is only dealing with the decision of the ÚOHS itself. It cannot address something that was not part of this investigation," explained Tesák. In the first half of this year, the antimonopoly office succeeded in three-quarters of the lawsuits against its decisions concerning public contracts. Out of 11 rulings by the Brno regional court, eight were negative by June. The regional court is now dealing with, for example, tenders for tolls and transporters for the Czech army.
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