SAO PAULO, Aug 4 (Reuters) - Brazilian electricity industry regulator Aneel on Friday disqualified one of the winners of a tender for transmission lines, saying the consortium was unable to prove the qualifications needed to carry out the project.
The Genesis consortium, made up of Entec and the Best Car Transporte de Cargas, had in June won two lots in the energy transmission tender, including the second-largest development auctioned that day.
However, the regulator said the group was not able to prove its legal, technical, and economic-financial qualifications or the fiscal health required to execute the projects,
Under the rules of the tender, the regulator will now call the runner-ups for both lots, ISA Cteep and Rialma Empreendimentos, to see if they are interested in taking over the projects.
Among the reasons given for the disqualification, Aneel said documents from Best Car, the consortium leader, classify it as a micro-company, although it claimed to have annual revenue of around 800 million to 1 billion reais ($206 million).
Furthermore, the regulator said the consortium had hired another company to build the projects it had won in the auction, though it did not present documents guaranteeing the contractor's ability to carry out the work and operate transmission assets of that size.
At the time of the auction, Genesis CEO Denis Rildon did not give details on the origin of the group nor its backers, saying only that the consortium, while not publicly known, had "very vast" experience and knowledge of the electricity sector.
Rildon also said resources had already been secured to execute the billion-dollar investments.
Genesis could not be immediately reached for comment. ($1 = 4.8528 reais) (Reporting by Leticia Fucuchima; Editing by Paul Simao)
