18. Ethics clauses / Corruptive practices  19. Signature of contract  19.1. Notification of award  Committee are bound to secrecy. The evaluation reports and written records, in particular, are  confidential and may be communicated neither to the tenderers nor to any party other than the  Contracting Authority, the European Commission, the European Anti-Fraud Office and the  European Court of Auditors.  a)  Any attempt by a tenderer to obtain confidential information, enter into unlawful  agreements with competitors or influence the Evaluation Committee or the Contracting Authority  during the process of examining, clarifying, evaluating and comparing tenders will lead to the  rejection of its tender and may result in administrative penalties.  b)  The tenderer must not be affected by any conflict of interest and must have no  equivalent relation in that respect with other tenderers or parties involved in the current  assignment.  c)  The European Investment Bank reserves the right to suspend or cancel project financing  if corrupt practices of any kind are discovered at any stage of the award process or during the  execution of a contract. For the purposes of this provision, ‘corrupt practices’ are the offer of a  bribe, gift, gratuity or commission to any person as an inducement or reward for performing or  refraining from any act relating to the award of a contract or execution of a contract already  concluded with the Contracting Authority.  d)  Tenders will be rejected or contracts terminated if it emerges that the award or execution  of a contract has given rise to unusual commercial expenses. Such unusual commercial  expenses are commissions not mentioned in the main contract or not stemming from a properly  concluded contract referring to the main contract, commissions not paid in return for any actual  and legitimate service, commissions remitted to a tax haven, commissions paid to a payee who  is not clearly identified or commissions paid to a company which has every appearance of being  a front company.  e)  The Contracting Authority reserves the right to suspend or cancel the procedure, where  the award procedure proves to have been subject to substantial errors, irregularities or fraud. If  substantial errors, irregularities or fraud are discovered after the award of the Contract, the  Contracting Authority may refrain from concluding the Contract.  The successful tenderer will be informed in writing that its tender has been accepted.  The successful tenderer shall then confirm availability or unavailability of their key-experts within  5 days from the date of the notification of award. In case of unavailability the tenderer will be allowed to propose replacement key-expert(s). The  successful tenderer shall give due justification for the exchange of the key-expert but the  acceptance will not be limited to specific cases. Several replacement key-experts may be  proposed but only one time-period of 15 days from the date of the notification of award will be  offered. The replacement key-expert(s) cannot be an expert proposed by another tenderer in the  same call for tender.  The replacement key-expert's total score must be at least as high as the scores of the key- expert proposed in the tender. It must be emphasised that the minimum requirements for each  evaluation criteria must be met by the replacement expert.  If replacement key-experts are not proposed within the 15 days delay or if the replacement  experts are not sufficiently qualified, or that the proposal of the replacement key-expert amends  the award conditions which took place, the Contracting Authority may decide to award the  contract to the second best technically compliant tenderer (also giving them a chance to replace  a key-expert should he/she not be available).  Should the Contracting Authority learn that a tenderer has confirmed the availability of a key  expert and signed the contract although the tenderer has deliberately concealed the fact that the  key-expert is unavailable from the date specified in the tender dossier for the start of the  assignment, the Contracting Authority may decide to terminate the contract on the basis of  AA-000799-002_TAINSTRUCT  Page 10 of 12 A. INSTRUCTIONS TO TENDERERS 