No sooner than the announcement came out that the bid had been awarded when it was announced that the bid was then suspended.

Panama said on Thursday that it has suspended a tender for a second subway line, due to a complaint by one of the bidders about the process.

The complaint, submitted by the Panametro consortium, alleged that there were errors in the bid process stemming from the fact that at least two members of the evaluation committee had links to the winning group.

Last week, Panama announced that a group including Brazil’s Odebrecht and Spain’s FCC Construcciones presented the best proposal for the Line 2 subway, with a cost of $1.857 billion.

The Odebrecht-FCC consortium also constructed Panama’s first subway line for about $2 billion.

On Thursday, Panama’s public contracting department (DGCP) said it had suspended the bid and would be reviewing documents related to the tender process to properly evaluate the Panametro consortium’s case.

The Panametro consortium is made up of China Harbour Engineering Company, China Railway First Group Co and Spain’s CORSAIN-CORVIAM Construccion.

The third bidder for the subway line was UTE Panama II, formed by Spain’s Dragados, Mexico’s ICA, and Peru’s Grana y Montero. (Reporting by Elida Moreno and Jean Luis Arce; Writing by Joanna Zuckerman Bernstein; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier)