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reThe Ministry of Defense canceled the contract for the new German armed forces assault rifle to the Suhl-based company CG Haenel due to alleged violations of the public procurement law. Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (CDU) had this reported to Defense Committee officials on Friday. This was preceded by complaints from the Heckler & Koch company, which has always supplied the standard rifle for the armed forces for seventy years, most recently the G36.
The FAZ investigations had also pointed to numerous anomalies in the process and the small business that surprisingly beat Heckler & Koch with an assault rifle that experts say is based on a sample of a weapon called the Caracal CAR 816 ” Sultan”. This weapon is only used in the manufacturer’s emirate by the general armed forces.
FDP defense policy Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann said of the process: “It’s incredible. Years of adjudication process, dubious ownership structures, now everything goes back to zero due to incredible rookie mistakes. As if it were toys ”. The president of the Greens, Tobias Lindner, spoke of a “gigantic embarrassment for the Ministry of Defense”. He expects immediate transparency of the processes, “So the consequences for the staff must be drawn from these processes.”
Nuisance in the Bundestag
Haenel, a former Wehrmacht supplier founded in Thuringia, is owned by a state arms company in the United Arab Emirates through a parent company. According to data from commercial data agencies, the company itself has about a dozen employees. The FAZ’s questions about patent rights infringements at the Defense Ministry were rejected as unfounded at the time.
At the registry office, it is now said, “for the first time verifiable”, they have learned of a possible infringement of patent rights. In the bidding process, each supplier had to declare in writing that their product was free from third party rights and claims.
According to the information provided to the supervisors, the internal audit showed that such an infringement to the detriment of competitor Heckler & Koch “cannot be ruled out”. If that were the case, Haenel would have obtained the order for around 120,000 new assault rifles for the German armed forces through unfair means.
Therefore, the awarding authority is now forced to cancel the award to CG Haenel. The registry will go into a reevaluation. This also seems necessary because Heckler & Koch also complained of irregularities in the technical examination of the weapons surrendered. With the award decision canceled, Haenel is still not out of the race, as long as the company can prove that it made its weapon, called the MK556, without infringing any patent rights.
The decision provoked great ire in the Bundestag. The SPD chairman in the defense committee, Fritz Felgentreu, told FAZ: After the failure of the tender for the transport helicopter, this is now the second fiasco for the BAAIN in 14 days. This latest report is not a big deal for the troops. The G36 will do it for a while. But obviously a lot is happening in the house and you also have to ask Secretary of State Zimmer if he has lost the thread of things. ” BAAIN is the Federal Office for Equipment, Information Technology and Use of the Bundeswehr.
FDP President Alexander Müller told FAZ: With the cancellation of the award, there is an opportunity to end a failed acquisition project and save the taxpayer a great deal of cost. The G36 is a good and sophisticated assault rifle that soldiers are very satisfied with.
