Transparencia por Colombia sought the support of TI (UK), considering their significant experience on corruption and defense matters, and their international leadership on transparency on arms trade worldwide. TI-UK’s technical and financial support was crucial for the feasibility of the Colombian chapter’s participation. The preparation and implementation of the bidding process took place during 2004 and 2005.

The Colombian chapter has been working on Integrity Pacts for 7 years, and during this period has promoted the implementation of this tool in more than 60 public procurement processes in different sectors of the public administration. This experience has been particularly interesting, considering it was the first in an arms trade process with the participation of external monitors, being a process normally handled with great secrecy. In fact, TI’s participation was better accepted since we had previous experiences with the MOD with integrity pacts in other procurement processes, different from arms trade ones.

Transparencia por Colombia, with the crucial technical support from TI-UK monitored the process from the beginning (starting with the review of the bid document’s drafts), suggesting different measures (including the Integrity Pact), that could build enhanced transparency and public confidence in the process. This participation allowed for an important number of decisions taken that, in our view, helped clarify the rules and procedures and strengthen the technical aspects of the process. However, this participation did not last until the end, due to the collapse of the process following the withdrawal of all the interested participating companies but one. This company, in the end, didn’t comply with all the bid requirements, but nevertheless the government decided to go on with a direct negotiation approach with them. Given the situation, Transparencia por Colombia and TI-UK decided to decline the government’s invitation to continue monitoring the process.

In any case, one of the most valuable aspects of this experience was to confirm that it is possible to implement an arms trade procurement process including all the same publicity efforts that can be introduced in any other sector’s process. This case was supported by external monitors, the information was published on the website including drafts of the terms of reference, names of interested participating companies, questions and answers, intermediate and final decisions about the process. This was possible thanks to an open attitude by the government officials of the Ministry of Defense and FAC, who were in general very receptive of all the comments, recommendations and suggestions made by the Transparencia por Colombia/ TI-UK team. Despite the frustration caused by the collapse of the bid after all the efforts made, it was satisfying to verify that the causes stated by the participating companies that had withdrawn were that the conditions were too difficult for them to participate and be awarded the bid, rather than the perception that corruption problems were involved. This experience has also shown that the potential of the integrity pact is widely associated to the presence of an external monitor that can, with the necessary independence, stress those issues in the procurement process where corruption risks may arise.