Italians land railway project
ERGOSE, a railway construction management company which is a subsidiary of the Hellenic Railways Organization (OSE), has decided to award the project for a rail link between Psathopyrgos and Rio in the northern Peloponnese to Italy’s GD Infrastrutture Srl.
It took successive hearings and verdicts by the State Audit Council and 18 months for the management of ERGOSE to concede the 174-million-euro project to the Italian company that had submitted the best bid from the outset, offering a discount of 45.2 percent.
The Audit Council rejected the case of the second-best bidder three times. Porto Carras, which belongs to the Stengos family, had offered a discount of 36.7 percent – i.e. an additional charge to the state of 13 million euros.
Until recently, ERGOSE had insisted on rejecting the bid by GD Infrastrutture on the pretext that the Italian firm produced its social insurance clearance document in electronic form, without a stamp that would confirm the originality of the document. The Italian state only issues documents in electronic form, without using stamps, but this would not convince ERGOSE that insisted on not accepting the document.
The new owner of the Greek railway company (Trainose), i.e. Ferrovia dello Stato Italiane, is also Italian.
