Belgian postal company bpost awarded highly lucrative contracts worth millions of euros to McKinsey, a major consulting firm, without issuing a proper tender as legally required by Belgian law.
According to reports published on Tuesday in Belgian press, over the past few years McKinsey has signed non-competitive consultancy deals with bpost worth up to €8 million annually. Bpost regularly justified the policy by appealing to the contracts' "urgent nature and the need for specific expertise," l'Echo and De Tijd report.
Anonymous sources cited by both newspapers claim that the Belgian Court of Audit has "constantly questioned this practice" while bpost employees who were concerned by how these contracts were issued "ran into a wall at the management level".
In addition to providing general advice on human resources policy and commercial projects, McKinsey reportedly handled the postal company's contracts with the Belgian State. Bpost, which is itself majority owned by the Belgian State, admitted last month that the profit margins on some these deals may "not be acceptable under applicable law".
Several top managers and directors of bpost have previously worked for McKinsey. Bpost's current Chair of the Board of Directors Audrey Hanard formerly worked as a junior consultant at the firm, while the CEO of bpost's e-logistics North-America business unit Henri de Romrée was a partner at McKinsey for more than a decade.
'Trying to rectify the situation'?
A spokesperson for bpost admitted that such non-competitive contracts have previously been awarded but claimed that "since 2018 we have been trying to rectify the situation and set up a tender process".
In particular, the spokesperson noted that since the start of 2022, bpost has introduced a new tender process whereby "a comparison is made between the offer of the different providers per assignment and competition is guaranteed".
Since this new tender process was launched, other major consultancies including Boston Consulting Group and Bain have reportedly won deals with the postal company. However, according to l'Echo and De Tijd, bpost itself only regards this new process as an "interim solution," which "follows the spirit but not the letter of the law".
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The current affair involving McKinsey is merely the latest in a succession of scandals implicating the company over the past few years. In 2021, then-bpost CEO Jean-Paul Van Avermaet was fired after his suspected involvement in a price-fixing scandal involving various security companies.
Moreover, just two months ago the CEO of the bpost subsidiary AMP Benoît Dewaele was reported to have had his salary channelled through a consultancy over the period April 2021 to December 2022 in order to pay less tax. Dewaele's behaviour was later condemned as "unacceptable" by Belgian Deputy Prime Minister and Postal Minister Petra de Sutter (Flemish Greens).
