The ministry canceled the tender for the construction of the judicial complex in Ústí nad Labem

Prague - The Ministry of Justice has canceled the procurement procedure for the public contract for the construction of the justice complex in Ústí nad Labem. The office announced this today in a press release. According to them, the bid prices exceeded its budgetary possibilities after the antitrust office disqualified the selected supplier. The ministry added that it is preparing a new procurement procedure, which will be started "in the near future."

The office decided to cancel the tender on Tuesday. "The Ministry of Justice could not simultaneously reach out to other participants in the procurement procedure, as their bids not only exceeded the bid price of the disqualified supplier by hundreds of millions of crowns but also surpassed the budgetary possibilities of the ministry," the office stated without further details.

From the publicly available decision of the Office for the Protection of Competition, it follows that the contract excluded the Judicial Complex in Ústí nad Labem - the association GEMO a.s. and JIMI CZ. According to the office, the ministry violated the principle of transparency in the procurement process when selecting the company, as it did not have sufficient documentation to prove that it met the participation conditions, specifically the conditions of technical qualification.

The construction of the justice complex for the district and regional court and the public prosecutor's office has been discussed since 2002. The current building, which has been in operation since 1974, does not meet the needs of justice. It is located in a flood zone and has been flooded several times during floods. The building also lacks a large courtroom.

In October 2013, President Miloš Zeman, along with Minister of Justice Marie Benešová, who was then a member of Jiří Rusnok's caretaker government, laid the cornerstone of the non-existent justice palace in Ústí. At that time, the completion date was estimated for 2018.

The public contract for the construction contractor was announced by the ministry at the end of 2022. The estimated value of the contract was 2.009 billion crowns excluding tax. The ministry planned to start construction in 2023. Plans published in 2021 estimated that 828 people would work in the building, making it the second largest justice complex in the country after the Na Míčánkách complex in Prague, where around a thousand people work.