Slovakia Mistakenly Signs €103 Billion Contract for Tatra Military Trucks

The Ministry of Defence of the Slovak Republic signed a framework agreement for the purchase of Tatra Force military trucks, in which it mistakenly stated the value of the potential purchase at €103 billion.

This was reported by the Slovak military publication Future Army.

According to the publication, it has already become a ‘good’ custom in Slovak ministries to conclude many important contracts at the end of the year – before or even during the holidays. The Slovak defense ministry was no exception, signing three major, though currently only framework contracts before Christmas.

The first of the framework contracts concerns the Eva M3 6×6 self-propelled howitzers. How it differs from the previous version, the Eva M2, is currently unknown.

The manufacturer Konštrukta — Defence lists only the M2 version on its website, and the framework agreement contains technical parameters of the M3 version in annexes that are completely classified. Only the total value of the contract is known – €780 million excluding VAT.

The second framework agreement concerns the SAM 120 self-propelled mortar from ZTS Špeciál, which was previously designated as AM 120. The technical description of the product and its unit price are also contained in the annexes, which remain classified. Only the total value of the framework agreement is known – €594 million excluding VAT.

According to the publication, this is the first of three agreements concluded with errors. The preamble of the contract refers to the purchase of howitzers, presumably due to reckless copying of the text from the previous contract. However, the subject matter of the contract already has the mortar correctly listed, and compared to the mistake in the amount for Tatra, this is a trifle. However, in the opinion of the publication, this at least indicates the haste in which the contracts were prepared.

A significant error in the Tatra contract

The largest of the three framework agreements concerns the purchase of Tatra vehicles. Unlike the previous two, its value is not rounded off, but rather precisely defined – €1,032,689,734, or one billion and almost €33 million.

Immediately after that, a rather serious error appears in the contract: the amount is verbally written as ‘one hundred and three billion euros,’ which is a strikingly different value compared to the one billion written in numbers.

The error most likely arose because someone ignored the decimal point before the two zeros at the end of the verbal entry.

The precisely defined amount in the framework agreement indicates that this time the defense ministry intends to fully implement it. This is also confirmed by the statement of the CSG arms company, which acted as an intermediary in the procurement, according to which 1289 military vehicles based on the Tatra T 815-7 in 24 different versions will be delivered to Slovakia under this contract.

This is the second major contract for the purchase of Tatra trucks. The first one was signed back in 2024 and covered the purchase of Tatra trucks worth €700 million.