Building an intranet to enable the Romanian veterinary authority to track all tagged domestic animals was a 100 million euros deal "doctored" by at least four people already indicted, following a police investigation. One of the four is the sales director with Hewlett-Packard Romania, Orest Robciuc, accused to have rigged the bidding. The other three are: Liviu Harbuz and Sorin Mitrea, former president and general manager of the national veterinary authority, respectively, and Ovidiu Vladu, owner of IQ Management, another IT&C company taking part in the bidding along HP Romania.
The alleged wrong-doing occurred in 2004, but investigators believe the affair was planned at least one year ahead.
In early 2003 Harbuz asked the then minister of agriculture Ilie Sarbu to approve the implementation of an intranet system for the veterinary authority, which was supposed to link together the 42 county subsidiaries and the three institutes controlling the livestock health, the quality of drugs and bio-products used in the veterinary work, and that of the quality of food, respectively.
Sarbu did sign the request made by Harbuz. But the latter perverted the initial agreement with an internal memo, which divided the contract among the 42 local subsidiaries of the veterinary authority. Thus, the initial 100 million euros contract, which should have been the object of public bidding, turned into 42 smaller contracts, all under the 40,000 euros legal threshold for calling a public bidding.
Thus Harbuz wrote that Sarbu approved "the public acquisitions procedure via request for offers," which of course, was not true.
The local veterinary authorities were informed that five IT&C companies showed interest in the contract: IQ Management, HP Romania, Omnilogic BGS, Dim Software, and Uranus ltd.
Only two companies actually send their offers to the veteri
