Open Data promotes investigative journalism, facts about fraud through tenders

1 in 3 tenders without fair competition, open data encourage investigative journalism to denounce corruption with taxpayers’ money On January 7th, the TopStory investigative show on Top Channel denounced forms of fraud through public procurement tenders. Shocking facts were brought to the program for one in every three tenders without fair competition. 300 million euros of taxpayers’ money results to be lost every year, abused and misappropriated through tenders with clientelist elements. AIS, an organization promoting Open Data in Albania, contributed to this courageous TV investigation through data released: Specifically: Data about tenders and contracts with problems regarding competition published on the Open Procurement Albania portal; information about clientelist companies published in the Open Corporates Albania portal, and data on the payments from the State Budget published on Spending Data Albania . For the last four years, AIS has been publishing data and assessing the risk of irregularities in tenders, known as RedFlag procurement, identifying information and gaps for every tender held by municipalities ; Albanian Development Fund ; Albanian Road Authority ; Health Sector; Central Purchasing Agency; Public-Owned Agency;