Company, ex-director fined for rigging bids in Ngee Ann Polytechnic quotation exercises

SINGAPORE: A software company and an ex-director have been fined by Singapore’s competition watchdog for rigging bids in quotation exercises called by a polytechnic, the Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore (CCCS) said on Thursday (Sep 5).
The company, Rei Securite, and Soh Chee Keong – the director of another, now-defunct, company called QBTT – were fined S$6,237 and S$2,550 respectively.
Ngee Ann Polytechnic held three quotation exercises for vulnerability management software and related support services between January 2021 and November 2022. The polytechnic alerted CCCS in January 2023 after noticing anti-competitive conduct.
The affected quote exercises were valued at between S$63,000 and S$65,000 for software used to perform vulnerability assessment scans and source code reviews on NP’s student management system.
To create the “illusion of competition”, Soh and Rei devised a plan in which Soh would submit cover bids from two newly incorporated companies, QBTT and Contabilita.
QBTT, Contabilita and Rei would be the only participants in NP’s quotation exercises, though the former two companies were shams, with no business activity or revenue. 
“Both companies never won or had the intention” to win any of the exercises, CCCS said.
CCCS’ investigations found that Soh had prepared and edited the bids for Rei, Contabilita and QBTT, which he submitted on government e-procurement portal GeBIZ at different times using their Corppass accounts, to make it appear that the submissions were independently prepared and submitted.
Soh was fully aware of Rei’s bid prices, and had ensured that QBTT and Contabilita priced their respective bids in a manner “that would ensure Rei’s bid would be the lowest and therefore the most competitive”, said CCCS.
Rei and Soh both benefitted from the arrangement when Rei won the quotation exercises.
While Soh was the sole director and shareholder of QBTT, he was concurrently contracted by Rei in his own capacity to provide IT support services to NP. Rei paid Soh up to S$34,000 as “service fees” for doing so.
Both Rei and Soh did not respond or object to a proposed infringement decision issued by CCCS on Aug 2.
Alvin Koh, chief executive of CCCS, said: “Bid-rigging distorts competition in the market and prevents businesses from competing fairly.”
The bid-rigging prevented NP from obtaining the best value from its quotation exercises, Mr Koh added.
“CCCS has a zero-tolerance approach towards such practices.”
Mr Koh urged businesses and government agencies to report potential bid-rigging and irregularities in their tendering processes to CCCS.
Any business that is currently involved in a cartel should approach CCCS to make a leniency application as soon as possible, it warned. 
Any person with useful information on cartel activity in Singapore may also provide that information through CCCS’s Reward/Whistle-blowing scheme. 
“Monetary rewards of up to S$120,000 can be paid to such informants,” CCCS said.