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Fraud in public funding can have deleterious consequences for the economic,social, and political well-being of societies. Fraudulent activity associatedwith public procurement contracts accounts for losses of billions of eurosevery year. Thus, it is of utmost relevance to explore analytical frameworksthat can help public authorities identify agents that are more susceptible toincur in irregular activities. Here, we use standard network science methods tostudy the co-biding relationships between firms that participate in publictenders issued by the $184$ municipalities of the State of Cear\'a (Brazil)between 2015 and 2019. We identify $22$ groups/communities of firms withsimilar patterns of procurement activity, defined by their geographic andactivity scopes. The profiling of the communities allows us to highlight groupsthat are more susceptible to market manipulation and irregular activities. Ourwork reinforces the potential application of network analysis in policy tounfold the complex nature of relationships between market agents in a scenarioof scarce data.

Characterization of the Firm-Firm Public Procurement Co-Bidding Network from the State of Cear\'a (Brazil) Municipalities