It said its Office of Integrity and Anti-Corruption established that CICO engaged in a fraudulent practice when bidding for an AfDB-financed road project in Uganda.

To meet the pre-qualification requirements for tenders, CICO “inflated its purported experience with similar projects, grossly overstating both the scope and the value of contracts it had supposedly successfully completed in the past”, the bank said.

Examples of this included CICO presenting a contract for a road of 4.4km having been for 68km, and inflating the value of a reference contract from $17.5m to some $79m.

Bubacarr Sankareh, acting director of the Office of Integrity and Anti-Corruption, said: “It is the duty of the African Development Bank to ensure that the funds it receives from donors are used exclusively to further the socio-economic development of the institution’s regional member countries.

“CICO will therefore remain debarred until the bank is assured that it is not putting funds at risk by doing business with this company”,

After its year’s penalty expires, CICO will have to implement a comprehensive integrity compliance programme that meets the ADB’s standards before it can bid again.

CICO’s website describes it as a subsidiary of Chongqing Foreign Trade and Economy Corporation and as a qualified contractor for overseas projects with branch companies in Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Jordan and Liberia.

It said it had conducted more than 60 large and medium international construction projects in Asia and Africa.