May 23 (SeeNews) - Greece's Avax submitted with a Croatian court a complaint against a decision to cancel a 482 million kuna ($72.3 million/64.9 million euro) contract it has been awarded to build the access roads of the Peljesac bridge, Zagreb-based media reported on Thursday.
Avax submitted the complaint on May 16 and a verdict will be announced within 30 days, officials from Croatia's High Administrative Court confirmed for daily Poslovni Dnevnik.
In February the country's state motorway operator Hrvatske Ceste (HC) announced Avax as the winner of a tender for the 12-kilometre Duboka-Sparagovici road section which had attracted seven bids.
In March, Austria's Strabag and Greece's Aktor, who had also taken part in the tender, filed complaints against HC's decision to award the contract to J&V Avax (as was back then the name of the firm). Aktor's appeal was dismissed but the public procurement supervision commission found Strabag's request well grounded and cancelled the tender results.
In its complaint, Strabag said HC should exclude Avax from the competition because of its participation in a cartel agreement in Greece. Accoring to HC, however, the Greek company had already implemented self-correction measures and paid a penalty for the cartel agreement.
The construction of the Peljesac bridge started in July 2018 after HC signed in April a 2.08 billion kuna deal for the project with a Chinese consortium led by CRBC. Croatia hopes to see its completion in January 2021.
The bridge will connect the peninsula of the same name with the rest of mainland Croatia over the Adriatic, providing an alternative route to crossing the Neum Corridor - a strip of the Adriatic coastline situated in Bosnia and Herzegovina between these two parts of Croatia.
The Peljesac bridge will be 55 m high and 2.4 km long, with four lanes.
(1 euro = 7.42685 kuna)