Organizers of the London 2012 Summer Olympic Games are going to use undercover surveillance to prevent construction firms from rigging bids to win three billion pounds of contracts for the London 2012 Games.
Games’ project officials will ask the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) to use new MI5-style techniques, including paid secret agents, to stop building work from being hijacked by cartels, reports The Times. The disclosure follows a major OFT investigation into alleged market corruption that discovered that building firms pay each other up to 50 thousand pounds to lose contracts deliberately.
The Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) will oversee contracts to construct the Olympic Park in Stratford East London that will include an 80,000-seat stadium, a swimming pool and diving complex, a velodrome, and an Olympic Village. It will also be in charge of procurement for large transport projects related to the Olympics, including the construction of Terminal 5 at Heathrow. The authority will officially come into existence when the London Olympics Bill completes its parliamentary stages this year.
Over the next six years more than 20,000 contracts will be put out to tender inviting about 120,000 bids by construction companies, according to industry experts.
Simon Williams, the director of cartel investigations, made an appeal to The Times for whistle-blowers such as secretaries and other staff in construction to volunteer to become undercover agents. They could be paid and would be protected.
Williams also made a plea for volunteers across the construction industry and other sectors who know about bid-rigging to become informers. He promised that the safety of informants was paramount. “We play a professional game. It’s possible somebody will remain within an organization, which is involved in wrong-doing, as an informant”.