But the bridge design so proudly unveiled is the subject of a major intellectual property theft dispute tonight. Engineer Roque Matus says the Lebanese company whose name appears on the design documents stole it directly from his design which he submitted to government 3 years ago. He made his case to us today:
Roque Matus, M&M Engineering "What we did is we opened the documents, right, and we noticed that what they did is they took our drawings, our design and they just cut and paste it, in this drawing with somebody else di claim title to the design."
Jules Vasquez
"So you're you're accusing them of open theft."
Roque Matus, M&M Engineering
"Yes, open theft, plagiarism."
Roque Matus has been building bridges and 25 years.He's built 52 of them - and he hoped to make the Belcan Bridge his 53rd. He submitted this drawing in 2022, but the project went dormant in an intra-government push and pull. Now, it's been put back out to tender from the City Council - and when he picked up the tender documents on Tuesday - he saw that the contracting firm - out of Lebanon - had used his designs word for word, measurement for measurement:
Roque Matus, M&M Engineering
"This da M&M drawing, this is what we produced for the Ministry of Works in our prevention when was it? In 2022."
"Jules, it doesn't take any scientist to watch this, and watch this and see, right?"
The title page is identical and it continues from there. He showed us multiple instances of design features, dimensions, nomenclature, and unique illustration features which appear in both documents.
Roque Matus, M&M Engineering
"So we ended up with a three span bridge with a span in the center of 29m, a span of 29.425m, and another end span of 29.42m, right? They have the exact numbers. Is that coincidental?"
"To the millimeter! Not to the meter! To the millimeter! Look at this number. 29.425. To the nearest millimeter."
"To highlight the joint details, we put the joint in blue, right. Even that, even the circle, even the color, even the shading is the same, right."
"But you have 50 strands to choose from. They chose the exact strands that I chose out of the 50."
Jules Vasquez
"What's the chance of that?"
Roque Matus, M&M Engineering
"It's one in ten thousand. It's the, it's the identical bridge rewritten over. That's all right. That's all I'm saying. Because every single aspect, my curvature of my bridge, the width of my bridge, the width of my sidewalk, even the type of rail I chose is the same rail as my bridge."
Today, Matus and his Engineer Meghan Martinez went over every duplicated detail with us and presented a convincing case but senior persons in the government have told us that Belmopan bought the design from the firm which hired Matus to make it. He rejects that out of hand:
Roque Matus, M&M Engineering
"Even if I sold a plan to MIDH, you have no right for plagiarize it. That's illegal. You understand me?"
"Let me put it this way. Can you buy a book from an author and then go and see-write the book and then put your name on it.Can you do that? Alright, good. I done answer your question."
"There's no where in the world that this is acceptable. I don't know who has the fault. I'm not blaming anyone, but you know what? Obviously this particular company, they got our drawing and they plagiarized it."
And he says when he tried to get answers, he got stonewalled:
Roque Matus, M&M Engineering
"But to be honest with you, I come to you now, because I have tried and nobody even you know, they play games. They answer me with a lot of dumb questions. I asked them "well how is this possible?" The Ministry of Works have tell me that, you know again they have reinforced that they do not have anything to do with it. Right? They have said that they were ordered or instructed to release the drawings and the documents to the Ministry of Finance, and that's the end of their story. And then when I asked the other departments, they are saying that the Ministry of Works is in charge of this project and that we will have transparency. Will you not answer my first question? How can you steal my drawing?"
Now, he feels this augurs poorly for the project:
Jules Vasquez
"You believe - and you very much do - that your design has been stolen - is it a tell, is it an indication that a fix is in?"
Roque Matus, M&M Engineering
"Exactly. That's what I, that's what I believe. Why would you, why would you reinvent the same thing again and pay more money for it?"
Jules Vasquez
"So then, do you believe that with that precedent that established the theft of the design that are you concerned, at the outset that the bidding process may not be as fair and transparent?"
Roque Matus, M&M Engineering
"Definitely. because if you could teach somebody intellectual property, right? if you could thief somebody intellectual property, you are capable of doing anything."
While Martinez feels it throws the profession into a dim light:
Meghan Martinez, Civil Engineer
"And this is, this is engineering is not like anyone can go and call themselves that. You have to study, you have to be registered, you have to pay your fees, you have to do all these things, and you have to put in the years, years and years and years and years and then something like this so blatant. Open the first page and you can see. You have got to be kidding me! This can't be real. It's we're in the matrix. This, this isn't real."
We did send an email to that Lebanese firm to ask about the allegation of intellectual property theft, but up to news time had not gotten a response. We'll keep following the story.
