Nearly a decade of mismanagement, omissions and possibly deliberate manipulation to the detriment of the public interest. The new evidence that keeps coming up with the project that if it were implemented today we wouldn’t be mourning dozens of people shows that successive governments have been indifferent to the quagmire the case has fallen into. It was the intervention of the European Commission in 2018, which led to the return of 2.4 million euros, that “woke up” the state apparatus, pointing to a deeper problem in contracting.

In 2014 HAVE WORKED signed an agreement with a private person to restore its performance alarm and remote control system, which was installed ten years earlier and fell into disuse due to damage and sabotage, mostly cable theft or destruction of infrastructure. The project is called “Restoration of the signaling system – remote control and replacement of 70 track changes in localized areas Axis Athens – Thessaloniki“, and the contractor is a joint venture of TOMI (a subsidiary of Ellactor) – Alstom. The contract had an initial budget of 41 million euros and a completion date of two years, i.e. in 2016.

Serial extensions

However, problems soon arose. Already in 2016, the project began to receive successive extensions, until, according to sources in the Ministry of Infrastructure, it reached a dead end. Given that the project was funded NSRF, the Financial Audit Commission (EDEL) intervened and conducted an audit in October and November 2018. In the audit report, EDL identified serious problems in the SKA-Plata department and demanded the recovery of 2.42 million euros from the project manager, ERGOSE. According to the decision of the then Deputy Minister of Finance Giorgos Chouliarakis (24.06.2019), who approved the audit report of EDEL, “the aforementioned fiscal correction was imposed for the failure to prepare and approve studies by a credit company (Art. Alstom) using specialized personnel and their experience in signaling and remote control projects. management, as well as the failure to provide specialized experience and know-how in the performance of work by a contracting consortium.

In other words, two years after the expiration of the initial contract period, part of the required research was not prepared and approved, and part of the work performed could not be certified. This event indicated that the convention was on the verge of dissolution, despite the “national plan” presented by Ministry of Infrastructure in 2018 he told the Community authorities that the project could be completed … in early 2019, deliberately misleading the Community authorities. However, the state did not defend its position. Instead of announcing the consortium (who, according to the EDL, was responsible for the situation), ERGOSE chose to progressively extend the project, accepting (albeit partially) responsibility for the delay. So the final project date is March 2023 and the next extension (until September) is ante portas.

Another 13.3 million euros

The mandatory return of part of the community funds initiated the development of the project. In early 2021, TOMI withdrew from the project, transferring its technical work on electronic systems to Alstom under a private agreement (formally remained in the consortium). Subsequently, a year later, at the end of 2022, an additional contract worth 13.3 million euros was signed with the consortium (essentially Alstom) to complete the project. All these delays certainly contributed to the fact that there is still no modern telecontrol and signaling system, nor the introduction of the ETCS system (which automatically brakes trains if they exceed the set speed or a serious problem is detected). Systems that could have prevented yesterday’s tragedy.