The matter was addressed this Friday at the ordinary plenary meeting of the CNE, which appreciated the presentation subscribed by the Legis Veritas Office, on behalf of the company Smartmatic, which was disqualified from the contest.
At the end of the meeting, the CNE spokesman, Lucas Quilundo, said that the competitor Smartmatic, after being disqualified from the contest, complained during the public act, to the Evaluation Commission, that it did not give any action to the complaint.
Dissatisfied, the company made a hierarchical appeal to the plenary of the CNE, which in turn maintained the decision of the Evaluation Commission not to grant the appeal.
As a continuation, Lucas Quilundo continued, the company again participated in the plenary of the CNE, as well as in the National Public Contracting Service, "on the basis that the selected bidder with whom the CNE concluded would be under sanction within the framework of the Spanish regulatory authorities".
According to Lucas Quilundo, in view of the complaint, the CNE plenary understood, as it was not within its competence to follow up on it, to resort to the National Public Contracting Service, which is the public entity that oversees and supervises all public contracts.
"And from this assessment by the National Public Contracting Service, it resulted that the complaint is not based on true facts, since the examination carried out (...) the entity with which the National Electoral Commission signed a contract, does not have any type of sanction, as the disqualified contestant wants to make believe", he said.
The spokesperson for the CNE explained that the company Indra is a multinational and within it it has branches and branches and the entity that won the tender to supply the technological solution for the 2022 elections and electoral logistics, Minsait, "although it has in its designation the prefix of the Indra matrix, in any case it is an entity different from everything else that can be part of this business conglomerate".
Lucas Quilundo, citing the official letter of the National Public Contracting Service, highlighted that the work done was not glimpsed within two resolutions of the National and Competition Commission of Spain - S/DC/0627/18 and resolution S/DC/0565/15 Licitaciones de Aplicaciones Informática - "any factual and legal grounds that justify a corrective intervention on public tender No. 02/CP/CNE/2021 for the acquisition of technological solution and electoral logistics services for the 2022 general elections triggered by the CNE".
"In other words, it is the National Public Contracting Service, as a public entity responsible for public acquisitions, which comes, in the context of this complaint that was made by this law firm on behalf of this company Smartmatic, to say that it does not exist about Indra Solutions, the competitor with whom the CNE enters into a contract, any type of illegality, so it does not have any type of impediment that could hinder the relationship it maintains with the CNE", he stressed.
Asked to clarify whether the contest was carried out with the company Indra or any of its subsidiaries, Lucas Quilundo said that when the entities present themselves to participate in the contest, the CNE "does not carry out this assessment, it does not enter the internal structure of the organization of the business groups".
"If it is a conglomerate of companies with several focuses, the arm specialized in information technologies and linked to the elections competes, that is what happened", he underlined.
Lucas Quilundo reinforced that, "in the context of this conglomerate that Indra is, its technology arm applied to the elections was the candidate".
"It is a company that is totally autonomous, it has its management bodies, and it is this entity that, in terms of what the investigations carried out by the National Public Contracting Service were, found that the complaint is unfounded", stressed.
The result of this contest has been contested by the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), the largest opposition party, which promised, this week, to prove in court that the company selected by the Government to support the electoral process, the Spanish Indra, "has a criminal record against the Republic of Angola".
Indra has already rejected these accusations: "The company has never received sanctions, administrative or criminal, for causes related to the provision of its services", said a source.
