Risk for Rasmussen: New NATO Headquarters in Financial Trouble

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/construction-of-new-nato-headquarters-in-brussel-overbudget-a-944468.html



NATO is building a new headquarters for one billion euros. But the construction consortium is in financial difficulties and the project is at risk of being halted. It's an embarrassment for outgoing NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

Risk for Rasmussen: New NATO Headquarters in Financial Trouble
By Fidelius Schmid and Christoph Schult
January 20, 2014 – 04:22 PM

Anders Fogh Rasmussen is a man who attaches a lot of importance to his public image. The Danish secretary general of NATO likes to be filmed while out jogging with his bodyguards in the morning, and he's always bronzed and impeccably dressed.

~snip~

But Rasmussen has a problem: The construction project has run into serious financial difficulties, according to documents seen by SPIEGEL. The consortium of firms building it is at risk of insolvency. Rasmussen is aware of the problem but hasn't seen fit yet to inform the public about it, meaning the taxpayers of the 28 NATO member states. At a meeting of NATO's Deputies Committee on December 19, Rasmussen's staff asked that the issue be dealt with "confidentially."

The Committee consists of representatives of all 28 NATO member states. Rasmussen's staff told it that the consortium leader, BAM Alliance, was in serious financial difficulty "resulting from miscalculation and high claims from subcontractors," according to a Dec. 20, 2013 report by Germany's NATO representative office in Brussels. The conclusion was that the project would not be able to stick to the budgeted upper limit of €1.05 billion. Without a fresh injection of capital, construction would come to a halt.

The mood was frosty. Member states had already been skeptical when the consortium won the contract for €460 million in 2010 -- the offer was €210 million below the costs estimated by NATO.