Court revokes Afula tender over price-fixing

Afula
Afula

Most of the 43 homes in the tender were awarded to Arab Israelis from a nearby town lending the controversy a nationalistic tinge.

The Nazareth District Court revoked Sunday a tender awarded by the Israel Land Authority for the building of 43 homes in 27 lots in Afula. The ruling said bidders coordinated their price offers and the tender was unclearly written.

The tender was published by the ILA in June 2015 and concluded in November of that year when the ILA tender committee awarded the lots.

Shortly after the tender ended, Afula residents petitioned the ILA claiming wrongdoing by some of the bidders -- they alleged price fixing because of the identical figures in several bids. However, upon further discussion, the ILA committee decided to leave the results unchanged.

The tender caused an outbreak of public outrage in Afula not only because of the allegations of irregularities but because many of the winning bidders were Arab Israelis from a nearby town. The resulting demonstrations had a nationalistic tinge.

After the tender committee reconsidered the results of the tender, four representatives who opposed the decision petitioned the court to revoke the tender.

After examining the details of the case, the Nazareth District Court president, Judge Avraham Avraham ruled Sunday to revoke the tender, citing two primary concerns: price fixing and faulty wording of the tender.

In his ruling, the judge wrote: "The tender included 18 lots for multi-family units and 9 lots for single-family construction. The Mukari group, which numbered more than 20 bidders, submitted 18 offers of NIS 255,555 for a multi-family lot, and two identical offers of NIS 199,000 for a single-family lot. Each bidder from the group focused on a specific lot, with no competition from the group. Which brings us to the question of whether there is evidence of a player who united the bids, and the answer is clear: even if it was simply a spontaneous organization, there was one unifier -- Mukari assembled the group, he recommended the price which everyone submitted; Mukari and a lawyer from his firm filled out the collateral documents in their own handwriting; Mukari collected the collateral funds from the group members, deposited them into his own account, and pulled out the financial gurantees; Mukari even offered the group members professional assistance from his office in the planning and building stages, which would assuredly profit the firm he owns."

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on April 25, 2016

© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2016

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