An Israeli court has issued an injunction against HP which prevents it carrying out a contract with the Ministry of the Interior.

The ruling has a long history going back to 2001 when the Ministry tried to bring in smart ID cards.

There were 10 companies other than HP who put in a tender, all of them, including Beeri Printers Technologies, were disqualified from bidding for the project.
Beeri took the case to court which then disqualified HP. The court slammed the wording and conduct of the tender, and because unnecessary threshold conditions were added to the tender after its publication.

In 2005, the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Finance had another go at publishing a new tender, which Beeri Printers claims was designed to fail. New threshold and other conditions were also added to this tender, including a requirement for the smart ID cards to undergo laboratory testing to verify the electronic signatures.

Both HP Israel and Beeri Printers bid in this tender, and Beeri's tender was disqualified, again leaving HP Israel as the sole participant.

But HP's bid was 68% higher than the ministries' estimate and HP Israel's bid should have also been disqualified.

Instead the Ministries of Finance and the Interior decided to go ahead with negotiations with HP Israel and way and exempt HP from the tendering process.

Yesterday, the Jerusalem Court for Administrative Affairs issued an injunction prohibiting implementation of the agreement being enacted. It is not clear why the Israeli government is so determined to give the contract to HP. X

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