Winning bidder for e-passport same firm that printed Arrovo bills?

MANILA, Philippines – The firm tapped by the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) to produce supposedly tamper-proof electronic passports is said to be the same company that printed the P100 “Arrovo” bills that provided much embarrassment to the Philippine government in 2005.

Sources in the printing industry told The STAR that Oberthur Technologies, the company that has been awarded by the DFA and BSP the contract to manufacture state-of-the-art electronic passport equipped with a tamper-proof microchip that will contain the identification and personal information of a passport bearer, was the same European group that printed some 80 million P100 bills in 2005 that misspelled the surname of President Arroyo as “Arrovo.”

The sources said that the incident was the first time in the Philippines’ history that a bank note bore a misspelling error.

It will be recalled that the political opposition made much of the misspelling of the President’s surname as they pointed out that the word “rovo” stands for robbery in Spanish.

As many as 2.092 million pieces were released for circulation before the error was discovered.

Jeff Constantino of the anti-corruption group Legal Management Society that is monitoring the alleged questionable moves of the DFA and BSP to set up a system to produce modern passports for the country, expressed concern over the choice of contractor to produce the e-passports.

“How can Oberthur implement the e-passport project when it could not even print the name of our country’s president correctly?” Constantino said.

The selection of Oberthur was just one of the highly questionable moves taken by the DFA in its push to establish a system for the issuance of machine-readable passports (MRPs) and then to upgrade to e-passports, according to Constantino.

Constantino shared that the system was supposed to have been embarked on under a private sector funded, build-operate-transfer scheme of private consortium BCA International when the DFA suddenly terminated the contract of the local group in the middle of the implementation of the project.

Constantino warned that the DFA and the BSP were in danger of incurring the contempt of the Supreme Court which is still resolving the case filed by BCA International against the DFA for the cancellation of its BOT contract.

“The decision on the case is expected any day now by reason of the fact that both parties have submitted their respective memoranda last October 2007. The DFA should have just waited for the release of the decision, rather than humiliating the Supreme Court by disregarding the outcome of its impending decision,” Constantino revealed.

Constantino said that the DFA was also showing bad faith when it awarded the e-passport contract to Oberthur especially in connection with the arbitration proceedings being initiated as a result of the termination of BCA’s BOT contract.

But a ranking DFA official said the Supreme Court’s lifting of the injunction order issued by a lower court was interpreted by the DFA as clearance to proceed with the machine-readable passport (e-passport) system instead of waiting for the high court’s ruling with finality.

The official, who asked not to be named, said the BSP conducted the bidding for the supposedly tamper-proof electronic passports.

“With the SC lifting of the TRO, in effect wala na yung TRO na inisyu ng lower court,” the official said.

But the official was not aware if the winning bidder Oberthur Technologies is the same company that printed the P100 “Arrovo” bills in 2005 since the bidding was conducted by the BSP.

No immediate DFA official statement was issued.

The STAR tried to reach DFA Assistant Secretary for Consular Affairs Domingo Lucinario for comment but the latter was out of the country.

The DFA was hopeful that the SC would hand a favorable judgment on the e-passport project because of the urgency of the case and the deadline set by the ICAO to comply with global standards for the passport system.

It may be recalled that BCA International won the bidding for the MRPs in 1999 and was awarded the contract in 2000.

Despite the delays caused by the DFA raising issues during the project implementation, BCA was able to finish the first phase of the project.

The DFA, through Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo, went on to terminate the contract during the second phase citing BCA’s failure to prove its financial resources to complete the project.       – With Pia Lee-Brago