The conclusion of the contract between SRI and Digi “has nothing to do with the Government”, says Bolojan after SRI pointed to the Chancellery of the Prime Minister: “I found out from the press”
Interim Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan claims that the working group at the Government level only gave “a final approval” on the contracts negotiated by the beneficiary institutions with the suppliers, including in the case of the 196 million euro agreement between the Romanian Information Service and Digi.
The statements made by Bolojan on Thursday evening at Euronews, similar to the positions previously expressed by the Government and the head of the Prime Minister's Chancellery, contradict the explanations provided by the SRI, which claimed in a statement that “the identification and selection of suppliers for the projects financed through SAFE is carried out within the inter-institutional working group coordinated by the Head of the Prime Minister's Chancellery”.
The interim prime minister claims that “the conclusion of this contract between the Romanian Intelligence Service” and Digi, for the development of an integrated artificial intelligence platform, “has nothing to do with the Government of Romania”.
“After the amounts for each authority and the list of projects were approved, each authority, the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of the Interior, STS, SPP, in this case the Romanian Intelligence Service, negotiated its purchase, according to the legal provisions. Some carried out tender procedures, others had negotiation procedures, because in the case of armaments or some such security aspects, there are certain restrictions, and the SRI carried out this procedure”, said Ilie Bolognese.
“I simply found out from the press opposite who signed this contract”
Bolojan said that neither he nor the Government interfered in the negotiations between the suppliers and the contracting authorities.
“After, therefore, everyone negotiated the contract, at the end, they came up with the respective amount, with the contractor, and in the Government-level working group, which integrates all these procedures, a final approval was given, which meant that it was checked whether the destination of the allocated amount was respected and the amount in amount, but this working group had no interference in these negotiations, which were conducted directly, and the Government did not have any kind of discussion on the topic this, not even me personally, and I simply only found out from the press opposite who signed this contract”, added the interim prime minister.
He said that, in his opinion, the SRI and the other contracting authorities in the SAFE program must “explain as clearly as possible what happened,” because “otherwise confusion is created and people no longer understand what is happening.”
“All the institutions that made these contracts must be as transparent as possible under these conditions. Let's not forget that they are arms contracts, they are contracts that have certain confidentiality clauses. Because in the case of purchases like this, to eliminate any kind of suspicion, the more transparent you are, the more clearly you show things, the more you limit misinformation and, of course, clarify things. It seems normal to me that every institution that made such contracts should publish everything it can be published, respecting, of course, the legal provisions”, Ilie Bolojan also declared.
