Brno will verify whether the tender for the Tugendhat villa was manipulated

Brno - Brno city councilor Jiří Zlatuška and the head of the control department at the city hall Pavel Vavřík will investigate whether a two-year-old selection procedure for the designer of the restoration of the protected Tugendhat villa was manipulated. The city councilors agreed on this, reported the mayor Roman Onderka to journalists today.
    The employees of the control department will review the related documents and check whether anyone has misled the members of the committee that selected the designer. "To see if there were any indications that could evoke criminal responsibility," Onderka specified.
    Zlatuška believes that the tender was not conducted properly. According to him, the price at which individual teams proposed to restore the villa was actually decisive, but committee members compared the sums including VAT regardless of whether the architects accounted for a tax of five or 22 percent. "I believe that the committee members received instructions from an employee of the investment department of the city hall to rank the competitors based on the price including VAT," Zlatuška told ČTK. For this reason, he believes that the Association for the Tugendhat Villa won, even though when comparing prices excluding VAT, the team of architect Jan Sapák quoted a lower price.
    The officials are to complete the review within a month. "However, if expert opinions are needed, that deadline may be extended," informed ČTK spokesperson of the city hall Pavel Žára. Based on the results of the review, the councilors will then decide whether to assign the processing of the documentation to the second-placed Sapák, to announce a new selection procedure, or whether the restoration will take place according to the already prepared and paid project of the Association for the Tugendhat Villa. That cost the city nine million crowns.
    The two-year-old tender is now also being independently examined by the Office for the Protection of Competition and the Supreme Administrative Court. According to mayor Onderka, their statements will also play a role in how the city behaves. The continuously postponed restoration of the functionalist monument, listed on the UNESCO World Heritage list, should, according to the mayor, start next year.
    The descendants of the villa's owners are now considering a request for the return of the property, which the family left before the arrival of the Nazis in 1938. Onderka does not believe they could regain the villa. "Restitutions relate to state property; this is city property," he stated.