Mexico threatens suit against Rivada Networks, which cites deposition in alleging Red Compartida improprieties

But Rivada Networks disputed the SCT position on Gongora in a tweet yesterday.

“Public official in question was still at [SCT] when Red Compartida process started and had access to information,” the tweet states.

Haan deposition also includes the description of a dinner conversation he had with former colleague Rick Keith after SCT had named the Altan consortium as the winner of the nationwide procurement. Early in the procurement process, Keith was a subcontractor who worked with Deloitte on a model business plan—more than 100 printed pages—for Red Compartida that SCT decided should remain confidential and be reserved only for internal use.

Later, Keith consulted for SCT and saw the Altan bid documents—the contents of which looked very familiar, according to Haan’s deposition.

“As we were having dinner, [Keith] said that one of the bids was essentially a photocopy of our Deloitte work, or a 1% differential,” Haan said in his deposition.

Haan said he did not know how a bidder would get access to the Deloitte-created business plan and that he was “unhappily surprised” by the information Keith shared.

“The goal of any independent transparent and nondiscriminatory process is that all parties have equal access. Whether they use the information or not, they have to have the same access,” Haan said in his deposition. “Having discriminatory access, in and of itself, is a significant issue. It does not meet anybody's definition of international best practices.

“Subsequently, …  if there is discriminatory access, that information—by definition—is discriminatory and asymmetric, and it gives one party an unfair footing.”

Rivada Networks officials have expressed hope that Keith would confirm this business-plan information that Haan provided during a separate deposition. That deposition was conducted today, but the transcript is not available yet, according to Rivada’s Carney.

In its statement yesterday, the SCT noted that “the SCT did not use any business plan of its own or provided by Deloitte or any other consultant to evaluate the proposals of the contestants. Each contestant was responsible for developing their own business plan and the only evaluation criterion consisted of the percentage of population coverage offered.”

Rivada Networks also is pursuing other legal action in the U.S., where its Rivada Mercury consortium has filed a lawsuit protesting its exclusion from the final “competitive range” in the FirstNet nationwide RFP procurement.