LAHORE: In what appears to be a huge financial scam of the country, the officials of the National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) have allegedly caused a loss of not less than $5 million to the national exchequer by awarding contracts for upgrade and maintenance of the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) at exaggerated prices from 2009 to 2014, Dawn has learnt.

Nadra had acquired the AFIS from SAGEM Defence Securite of France in 2004 and installed the fingerprint matching system in 2005. The system remained on warranty for the next three years till June 2008.

After expiry of the warranty, Nadra started awarding contracts of maintenance of the acquired system and the first such contract was signed with SAGEM Company for a period of one year from July 2009 to June 2010 at the total cost of $796,180 per annum.

The same vendor with a different name (Safran Marpho) was granted the annual contracts for two subsequent years from July 2010 to June 2012 against the same price. Later, the cost was raised and a one-year contract for the maintenance of the system was signed again with the same company for 2012-13 at a cost of $1,073,280 per annum. The contract was also renewed in favour of the same vendor for the next year 2013-14 against an increased price of $1,192,533.

Sources allege that the authorities kept awarding the maintenance contracts to the same vendor at an extremely high cost without negotiation, in violation of international IT procurement practices. They said the authority also awarded maintenance contracts against the equipment that was either discarded or never existed.

The documents, available with the newspaper, also reveal that the authorities had purchased new equipment in 2012 but continued to sign maintenance contracts with the same vendor for the replaced and decommissioned system.

The sources claim that the officials purchased an unnecessary solution for disaster recovery for the AFIS in 2012 against a hefty amount of $1.9m. They also doubt existence of the solution.

In 2014, Nadra board, expressing concern over the price of past maintenance contracts, assigned the task to negotiate with the vendor for new contracts to some other officials. Interestingly, the successive officials negotiated with the same vendor and signed the same maintenance contract at a price of $630,000 per annum for a period of three years from July 2014 to June 2017, saving one million dollars annually.

Sources say the authorities are reluctant to investigate the officials involved in causing a huge loss of the public money in terms of making overpriced contracts due to their strong connection in the interior ministry.

Spokesman for Nadra, Faik Ali, remained unavailable for the official version on the expensive contracts despite repeated calls made on his mobile phone.

Former chairman of Nadra, Tariq Malik, told Dawn the chairman had no direct role in award of the maintenance contracts as it was the job of officials of the national data warehouse.

Mr Malik, who served Nadra as chairman from 2012 to 2014, added such contracts were made by technical experts of the department and the chairman had to formally sign them. However, he claimed that no malpractice had been committed during his tenure.

Published in Dawn, June 26th, 2017