The story, exclusive to Inner City Press, goes like this: out to bid is a $50 million contract to provide Unmanned Aerial Systems services to the UN's MONUSCO in the DRC for a term of five (3 + 1 + 1) years. The present company, Leonardo, has a contract which expires in November. PPI beat out Leonardo, CAE, Thales, Qintetiq, Airbus and Trans Capital.

But shortly after our award, UN Procurement chief Dmitry Dovgopoly refused to approve the agreed upon terms and demanded PPI perform a demonstration flight prior to contract signature. Inner City Press covered Dovgopoly and similar tricks back when he was at the “D-1” level, and received pushback and is currenty still restricted to minders in the UN for pursuing its anti-corruption coverage into the UN Press Briefing Room, its work space purportedly assigned to a no-show Eygptian state corresponent Sanaa Youssef who has not asked a question in ten years.

On March 23, Inner City Press asked Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for Antonio Guterres who had Inner City Press evicted from the UN Press Briefing Room then its office, and still restricted, about this, UN transcript here: Inner City Press: on UN Procurement, I wanted to ask you something.  It… it seems like there's a… there's a contract for the drones, or aerial unmanned systems?

Spokesman:  Unmanned.

Inner City Press: And there was a declared winner, and… and somehow the winner… the… the… the low bidder is now being told that they're not getting the contract, and that Mr. [Dmitri] Dovgopoly of UN Procurement seeks to do sole-source negotiations with people that had higher bids.  I wonder if you can get a statement from them what the status of that is?

Spokesman:  I'll see… I'll see what I can get." Nine hours later and counting, nothing. The UN is corrupt.

In this case, Dovgopoly is said to be lobbied by European interests, see the list of bidders above. As Inner City Press reported, the UN drone program was pushed by Herve Ladsous, the fourth of now five Frenchmen in a row to run UN Peacekeeping.

Dovgopoly's “ditch the winner” campaign has included two site inspections and the demand for a demonstration flight prior to deployment, none of which was performed with Leonardo or Thales. PPI tells Inner City Press it agreed to all demands and began manufacturing of aircraft with its contractors. Dovgopoly canceled the demonstration flight a month later. The manufacturing of aircraft has been suspended as a result.

Dovgopoly has reportedly since alleged that PPI misrepresented a relationship with one of its proposed vendors, which PPI denies. Dovgopoly has sent PPI notice rescinding the notice of consideration for award and requested permission to directly negotiate with competitors due to the urgent need to provide MONUSCO with airborne ISR capability as soon as possible. He has requested permission to inform vendors of the allocated budget, and allow vendors to revise their technical proposals to “accommodate the financial constraint.”

Inner City Press understands that the UN's Headquarters Committee on Contracts has ruled the losing competitors' bids no longer valid since the Request For Proposals was from October 2016. It seems Dovgopoly wishes to discloses how much money is available and allow vendors to inform the UN services they can perform and dictate the price. Paying more for less! But it has happened before, as Inner City Press. And now, under Antonio Guterres. We'll have more on this.