Three contracts from postal company Bpost – about the handling of number plates, the processing of fines and the cashier function for the government – may have been tampered with, the company confirmed.
Bpost confirmed what Federal Minister for Public Enterprises Petra De Sutter said in the House on Thursday: Bpost is conducting internal investigations into possible irregularities in three major contracts it has with the government.
"It concerns the handling of number plates, the processing of fines and the cashier function for the government (the so-called 679 accounts, into which VAT must be paid, among other things)," Bpost spokesperson Veerle Van Mierlo told VRT. In those three cases, among other things, they look at whether the margins were correct.
"In the case of penalty processing, we will also look at whether the legal framework is correct: is there state aid or not? And we also check there whether the costs that have been passed on to the government are completely okay," she said. "In the case of the cashier function, we are going to look at whether the information shared with the government was completely correct."
'Things maybe slipped through the cracks'
This was able to happen because the company went through a whole transformation from a monopolistic state-owned business to an international, listed group. "Most people know the rules around that, but perhaps some have not fully understood the consequences of that," Van Mierlo said.
Additionally, she said that because they work in a "very regularised environment," they "perhaps rely a bit too much" on external checks by agencies before and after a contract is executed. "And in the three cases, we provided a service to the government that is done in a very efficient way. As a result, maybe things slipped through the cracks? That's all part of the investigation."
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In the meantime, the Federal Government itself is also having all the contracts it has with Bpost examined. "For me, it goes without saying that every euro that was overpaid must be repaid," De Sutter said earlier about this.
In any case, Bpost wants to "learn lessons" from the whole controversy. "We are strengthening our control procedures and systems and we are communicating a lot to our people about how to handle it," Van Mierlo stressed. "But if the investigation shows that things have happened that are not acceptable, we will bear the consequences. We will do everything we can to ensure that we can regain the trust of our customers, shareholders and people."
