Post Mortem Analysis of Corruption Cases

Job Description

USAID Government Accountability Initiative (GAI)

*Please see attachment for the full RFP document.

Title

Post Mortem Analysis of Corruption Cases

RFP Number

GAI-RFP-004

Contracting Authority

Checchi and Company Consulting, Inc. Representative Office

Belgrade

The USAID Serbia Government Accountability Initiative, implemented by Checchi and Company Consulting, Inc., is requesting proposals for a comprehensive `post-mortem` analysis of past corruption cases in Serbia, to provide feedback to the specialized anti-corruption courts and public prosecutors’ offices and information to GAI in development of technical assistance to build the capacity and improve the performance of courts and public prosecutors’ offices.

Date Published

April 12, 2019

Submission Deadline

April 30, 2019

Point of Contact

Name: Uroš Čuljković

Government Accountability Initiative

Email: uculjkovic@checchiconsulting.com

Tel: 011 41 45 880

Background

The Government Accountability Initiative (GAI) is a four year, USAID-funded activity, aimed at strengthening capacities and connections of key Serbian stakeholders to increase government accountability at the national and local levels. The project was awarded in February 2018, and is implemented by Checchi and Company Consulting, Inc.

Under Component 3 (Adjudication of Corruption Cases), GAI supports the Supreme Court of Cassation (SCC), Republic Public Prosecutor’s Office (RPPO), Ministry of Justice (MOJ), and specialized anti-corruption court units and prosecutors’ offices.

Under Component 3, GAI will:

• Support anti-corruption specialized court units in implementing the new Law on the Organization and Jurisdiction of State Organs in Fight against Organized Crime, Corruption and Terrorism Financing;
• Develop procedures and methodology for data collection, record keeping and statistical reporting on corruption cases, and
• Establish an electronic register of corruption cases (ERCC) to support information sharing between different institutions working on the investigation and prosecution of corruption cases.

The Law on Organization and Jurisdiction of State Organs in Fight against Organized Crime, Corruption and Terrorism Financing (hereinafter: Law on Organized Crime and Corruption) created four specialized anti-corruption court units and four Higher Courts in Belgrade, Novi Sad, Niš and Kraljevo, and related prosecution and investigation task forces. The adoption of the Law was followed by the amendments to the Criminal Code. Twenty-six criminal offenses related to corruption were amended or introduced in the legal system. The new court units began operation on schedule in March 2018, with training and technical support provided by donors.

With the aim to understand which strategies are most successful in prosecuting and adjudicating corruption cases in Serbia, and to define common shortfalls, the selected contractor will develop a comprehensive, learning-oriented, post-mortem analysis of corruption cases based on a pre-selected catalogue of criminal offences from the Serbian Criminal Code.

In order to support improvement in successful prosecution and adjudication of corruption cases, the analysis shall identify areas of weakness in case preparation, prosecution, and adjudication. The process shall be clearly focused on constructive institutional and procedural improvements, and not on finding fault. Results of a post-mortem will feed back into GAI support for individual institutions such as specialized anti-corruption courts and for the creation of an electronic register of corruption cases (ERCC).

The analysis will be presented to government representatives and the general public.

Purpose and Objective

GAI seeks to procure the services of an independent and credible research organization, consultancy firm, or group of consultants with a proven trackrecordofconductingqualityanalysis of litigation strategy. The main purposeofthiscontractisto determine where cases have failed or stalled, by analyzing the court decisions in first instance cases for two periods:

1. Relating to a selected corruption-related criminal offences in the period March 1, 2014 - March 1, 2018 — before entry into force of the Law on Organized Crime and Corruption on March 1, 2018, and accompanying changes in the Serbian Criminal Code that introduced a catalogue of new corruption-related criminal offences;
2. Corruption-related criminal offences adopted after March 1, 2018 in the specialized anticorruption court units of Higher Courts in Belgrade, Nis, Novi Sad, and Kraljevo.

Eligibility

Offerors must have:

• Proven capacity to conduct complex legal, litigation, and criminal law analysis;
• Proven organizational capacity to absorb, analyze, and synthesize large amounts of complex data within tight deadlines;
• Demonstrated competences of the persons responsible for conducting the analysis.

Questions and Clarifications

All questions and requests for clarification regarding this RFP should be submitted electronically to GAI-Belgrade@checchiconsulting.com, no later than April 17, 2019.

No phone calls or in-person inquiries will be entertained.

All correspondence must provide reference to the RFP number (in the subject).

Questions and clarifications that may be of interest to other bidders, will be circulated to all potential bidders/interested parties. For this purpose, all prospective bidders who doesn’t have questions or requests for clarification regarding the RFP, but wants to be informed about the clarification and answers that would be provided to other bidders upon their request, should submit their email to GAI-Belgrade@checchiconsulting.com.

Any verbal information received from a Checchi employee or any other entity shall not constitute an official response to any questions regarding this RFP.

Answers to all questions and request for clarification would be submitted to all bidders by Friday April 19 April.

Submission of Proposals

Proposals should be submitted electronically to the GAI Project Office in Belgrade, Serbia, to the email address: GAI-Belgrade@checchiconsulting.com, no later than April 30, 2019, 5 p.m. (CET). Bidders should refer to the RFP number (in the subject line of the email). Any proposals that arrive after this time will be considered at Checchi’s discretion.

Content of the Proposals

Proposal must include:

Technical Proposal Form: proposed technical approach, relevant previous experience of the organization in the field and professional/organizational capacities (including the key project team members, such as the Project Manager and other experts deemed necessary to perform the post mortem. The Technical Proposal should also include schedule of activities (Annex II).

Financial Proposal Form: costs presented using provided template in Excel: (Annex III).

Proposal Submission Form (Annex IV).

Selection Criteria for Award

Proposals will be ranked based on the criteria given in the Evaluation table below:

No.

Evaluated Area of Proposal Maximum Points

1

Technical proposal

Total 70

1.1

Quality of Methodology

- gathering of relevant data

- database filtering and processing

- feasibility of the sequence of activities and the time frame

30

1.2

Previous relevant experience on a similar project in the region/country

20

1.3

Organizational capacities and qualifications

20

2

Cost

Total 30

Total Points

100

Scope of Work

Purpose and Objectives

The contract will entail provision of the following services:

Conduct a comprehensive learning-oriented analysis of selected corruption cases to provide information to specialized anti-corruption courts and public prosecutors’ offices and other interlocutors (MOJ, Supreme Court, Republic Prosecutor’s Office) on areas for capacity building and improvement.

The proposed methodology should include the following:

1. In the part of the analysis related to court decisions made before March 1, 2018, the following information should be collected:
2. Case files and available court records for final first-instance judgments for the selected offences for the period March 1, 2014 to March 1, 2018, with number of each of the cases and number of accused;
3. List of cases in the second instance (appellate) stage, with the case number;
4. List of cases for the selected offences for the named period completed under plea agreements, with case number and number of the accused;
5. Area or sector in which the offence occurred (health sector, public procurement, etc);

From the judgments and, case files, the following information, at a minimum, should be examined in order to identify patterns:

1. prosecutorial strategy, including its scope, preparation and presentation of cases,
2. priority principles of prosecution with defined criteria for case selection and probability of conviction by offence type,
3. sentencing practices and possible disparities, and
4. congruence with judicial requirements, procedural streamlining and decision-making.

The sample of cases should be as representative as possible and disaggregated by appellate regions and designated basic and higher courts in the territories in which specialized anti-corruption departments were established.

In part of the analysis related to court decisions passed after March 1, 2018, the analysis shall include approximately 10 percent of all final cases decided in the four specialized A/C units for the selected set of criminal offences and for the specified period of time (March 1, 2018 to March 31, 2019).

The following information, at a minimum, should be collected:

1. Case file and available court records of sample cases;
2. List of ongoing cases for the selected offences;
3. List of final decisions for the selected offences, with number of cases and number of the accused (preferably segregated per type of final decision issued);
4. List of first instance judgments for the selected offences, with number of cases and number of accused;
5. List of cases in the second instance (appellate) stage, with the case number;
6. List of cases for the selected offences completed under plea agreements with number of each case and number of accused;
7. Area or sector in which the offence occurred (health sector, public procurement, etc);
8. Notification whether the case was initiated under the old or new provisions of the Criminal Code.

From the judgements and case files for sample cases, the following information, at a minimum, should be examined in order to identify patterns:

1. prosecutorial strategy, including its scope, preparation and presentation of cases,
2. priority principles of prosecution with defined criteria for case selection and probability of conviction by offence type,
3. sentencing practices and possible disparities, and
4. congruence with judicial requirements, procedural streamlining and decision-making.

The overall representative sample, for the total of both groups of cases, should not exceed 250 cases.

1. Comparative in-depth analysis of the final indictments and final court decisions for the selected criminal offences processed before and after March 1, 2018.

The analysis will focus on detection of trends and patterns in prosecuting criminal offences with elements of corruption in the indicated periods.

At a minimum, the prosecutorial strategies will be assessed through following indicators:

For the public prosecution:

1. Capacity in drafting the indictments,
2. Formulation of charges in the indictments,
3. Capacity in gathering of evidence to support the charges.

For the judiciary:

1. Judicial review of the indictment including the legal qualification of criminal offense,
2. Reasoning of judgments,
3. Sanctioning,
4. Case law harmonization (references to other cases, differences among courts, etc).

The offerors may suggest additional indicators or modification of the existing ones.

The proposed set of criminal offences for the analysis and comparison is the following: abuse of official position (Art. 359 Criminal Code), embezzlement (Art. 364), misfeasance (Art. 361), taking bribe (Art. 367), giving bribe (Art. 368), commercial fraud (Art. 223), abuse of position of a responsible person (Art. 227) and misfeasance in public procurement (Art. 228).

Tasks and Methodology

The selected offeror must describe how it will address the requirements of this SoW; providing a detailed description of the essential performance characteristics, reporting and quality assurance mechanisms that will be put in place, while demonstrating that the proposed methodology will be appropriate to the local conditions and context of the work.

Deliverables

The following are main expected deliverables. The offerors may suggest additional or interim deliverables based on proposed methodology.

• Inception report with identified methodology and process (agreed with GAI and relevant courts and public prosecutor`s offices), with proposed and agreed activities – within 20 days from signing of the contract;
• Final Report provided to GAI with the analysis of selected court decisions in corruption cases segregated in two groups: 1) court decisions in the period March 1, 2014 – March 1, 2018, and 2) court decisions after March 1, 2018, and comparative legal analysis of the two groups with key findings (in English and Serbian)
• Presentation of the analysis to GAI and relevant stakeholders in English and Serbian (PPT).

Expected Duration

Estimated start date: May 20, 2019.

Estimated end date: September 20, 2019.

Technical Submission Form

1. Methodology

Description of the analysis with proposed methodological approach to collection of court decisions for the analysis (up to two pages) should be provided. Include details on the proposed sampling methodology of court cases. A maximum of 250 cases should be sampled.

1. Previous experience

Previous experience conducting similar types of analysis, outlined in Annex 1, Scope of Work

Title of the project

Time of the implementation

Main activities

Source of funding/donor

Link to project description/results/reference

Please, provide information on similar analysis conducted in previous 5 years. Add rows as necessary.

Please, provide information for following positions and personnel responsible for conducting the analysis. For the positions 1, 2 and 3, please provide CVs.

Information about the project team that will be responsible for organization and implementation of activities, including technical experts. Please insert fields as appropriate depending on the composition of the team. Please provide CVs for all listed positions.

The level of expertise should include legal and case law analysis and data collection.

Position1. Project Manager

Name and surname

Professional background (occupation, degree of education)

Number of years of professional experience

Position 2. …

Name and surname

Professional background (occupation, degree of education)

Number of years of professional experience

Position 3. …

Name and surname

Professional background (occupation, degree of education)

Number of years of professional experience

ANNEX III

Financial Submission Form

For Financial Submission Form (detailed budget proposal) please use separate excel form using the proposed budget template below.

Please break down budget for ALL estimated types of costs in USD.

USAID GAI RFP-004 FINANCIAL PROPOSAL

PROPOSAL COST SUMMARY

Labor costs

Travel costs

Etc.

# of consultants

# of days per consultant

Daily rate per consultant (in USD)

Total cost (USD)

Dear Sir/Madam:

Proposal Submission Form

[Please insert logo of your organization/company]

We, the undersigned, hereby offer to provide professional services for GAI with the aim to develop a comprehensive learning-oriented post-mortem analysis of corruption cases for a selected set of criminal offences in accordance with your Request for Proposal. We are hereby submitting our Proposal, which includes the Technical Submission Form and Financial Submission Form.

We hereby declare that:

1. All the information and statements made in this Proposal are true and we accept that any misrepresentation contained in it may lead to our disqualification;
2. That we or the proposed experts do not have any conflict of interest in connection with the state and government institutions envisaged in the RFP and the SoW;
3. c) We have no outstanding bankruptcy or pending litigation or any legal action that could impair our operation as a going concern; and

We confirm that we have read, understood and hereby accept the Terms of Reference describing the duties and responsibilities required of us in this RFP.

We fully understand and recognize that GAI is not bound to accept this proposal, that we shall bear all costs associated with its preparation and submission, and that GAI will in no case be responsible or liable for those costs, regardless of the conduct or outcome of the evaluation.

Sincerely,

Authorized Signature:

Name and Title of Signatory: Name of Firm:

Contact Details:

About the Organization

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