Taiwan firm insists it is renovating Kiev stadium

 "In all official documents of Ukraine and the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), Archasia is still listed as the tender winner. Our goal is to design the best stadium for Ukraine so that it can successfully host Euro 2012," Archasia Design Group's manager Lai Shih-hao said.

 "We are a professional architecture design firm, so we are focusing on designing the stadium and are confident we can design the best stadium for Ukraine," he told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa by phone from Kiev.

 Lai refused to comment on news reports that Ukraine has stripped Archasia of the contract to re-design Kiev's Olympic Stadium, but said it has hired a Kiev law firm, Vasil Kisil and Partners, and should the need arise, it will take all necessary legal actions to protect its interests.

 "But I hope there will be a satisfactory solution," he added.

 On April 16, Archasia beat 18 contestants to win the bid to renovate the Olympic Stadium for Euro 2012, to be co-hosted by Ukraine and Poland.

 The 84,000-seat stadium, built in the 1920s, will host three group matches, one quarterfinal and the final in the summer of 2012.

 The budget for the refurbishing is about 200 million euro (314 million dollars).

 Ukraine's Ministry of Family, Youth and Sport subsequent to the tender result delayed signing the contract with Archasia, questioning the firm's ability and requiring it to provide proof that it is a legal firm in Taiwan.

 On Monday, Ivan Sidorenko, executive director of the Federation of Football of Ukraine, told Interfax news agency that Ukraine had awarded the contract to overhaul the Olympic Stadium to German architectural firm GMP (Gerkan, Marg und Partner GMBH).

 However, on Tuesday Interfax later qualified the report, citing the Ukraine football official as saying GMP had been approved to do the job, but the contract has not yet been officially awarded to the German firm.

 GMP is a daughter company of the German corporation Hochtief, and is participating in the almost-completed overhaul of a club stadium in the east Ukrainian city Dnipropetrovsk.

 Ukrainian officials led by Vice Premier Ivan Vasiniuk declared in June that Archasia's tender win was null and void, saying the company was inexperienced in building UEFA-standard stadiums and lacked registration in Ukraine.

 Bureaucratic in-fighting within the Ukrainian government, particularly between the heads of the Ministry of Sport and the National Committee for Euro 2012, has repeatedly stymied Ukrainian government preparation efforts for the tournament.

 Archasia said all these are Ukraine's excuses to break its promise to award the contract to it.

DPA