Rivada claims Altan won Mexico’s Red Compartida award ‘through improper and perhaps criminal means’

​A South Carolina federal court this week cleared the path for Rivada Networks to depose Richard Keith, a South Carolina consultant whose testimony is expected to support Rivada’s allegations that the winning Altan consortium bid for the Mexico government’s lucrative Red Compartida network was prepared in violation of Mexican law.

Last month, Mexico’s Secretariat of Communications and Transportation (SCT) awarded Altan the Red Compartida contract, which provides Altan with 90 MHz of prime 700 MHz spectrum to build and operate a wholesale wireless broadband network throughout Mexico. Mexican officials disqualified Rivada consortium’s bid, because the Rivada offer did not include a required bond at the time of bid submission.

Rivada is contesting that decision in the Mexican legal system. The Mexican government has requested that the case be heard immediately by Mexico’s Supreme Court, but no ruling on the matter has been made yet, according to Rivada Networks spokesman Brian Carney.

In its legal filing seeking federal-court subpoena power to have Keith testify, Rivada Networks claims that the Altan consortium’s winning bid was “substantially identical” to the Mexican government’s internal business model—a document that was supposed  to be secret.

“Rivada learned through credible sources that the Altan Consortium was improperly given access to the confidential internal SCT Business Model, which outlined the internal standards by which SCT was to judge the bids,” the legal filing states. “In fact, the Business Model was used as a “cheat sheet” for the Altan Consortium’s preparation of its bid: the bid, Rivada has learned, was identical to the Business Model in multiple, critical respects.

“Rivada, of course, never had access to this confidential and highly sensitive document. The misappropriation of the Business Model (and the Altan Consortium’s use of the Business Model as a blueprint for its bid) constitutes a clear violation of the integrity of the tender process as well as of [Rivada’s] right to a free, fair, and open competition in the Red Compartida tender.”

On Monday, the U.S. District Court in South Carolina granted Rivada’s petition, allowing Rivada to conduct discovery of Keith.

Rivada’s Carney said that no timetable has been established to conduct the discovery of Keith. Carney noted that any legal action involving Keith’s testimony would be used separately from Rivada’s current litigation in Mexico’s courts that disputes the Mexican government’s decision to disqualify the Rivada bid.