ÚOHS has imposed its third fine this year for a cartel among construction companies

Brno - The Office for the Protection of Competition (ÚOHS) has imposed its third large fine this year for a cartel among construction companies. Four companies are to pay almost 40 million crowns for coordinating bids in tenders in South Bohemia. The largest fine was imposed on SWIETELSKY construction, which has to pay nearly 37 million crowns. This was stated today by the chairman of the office, Petr Rafaj.

The decision is final, and the companies admitted to the cartel and cooperated with the office. "Due to the use of the settlement procedure, the penalties for the participants in the proceedings were reduced by 20 percent," Rafaj stated. The cartel also included smaller companies DAICH, VIALIT SOBĚSLAV, and CHALIŠ. Given the age of the case and also due to the settlement procedure, the fined companies can continue to participate in public tenders.

According to Jitka Linhartová from the law office Schoeneherr, this is the first case where the ÚOHS has used the settlement procedure for the most serious form of violation of the law. "Besides the fine, even though suitably reduced, the affected companies expose themselves to the risk of possible claims for damages from harmed third parties, both from the contracting authorities and from competitors," said Linhartová.

From 2007 to 2009 and also in 2013, the companies coordinated their participation and bids for a total of seven public contracts in the South Bohemia Region. These included, for example, repairs of local roads after the construction of a sewage system in the village of Kostelní Radouň, improvements to transport services and the appearance of the village of Libějice, or a similar contract for the village of Třebětice. The prohibited agreements always involved two or three companies, in various combinations.

Of the total fine, Swietelsky construction is to pay 36.7 million crowns. The fine for Daich is 1.8 million crowns, for Vialit Soběslav 802,000 crowns, and for Chališ 629,000 crowns.

"The administrative procedure is the latest result of an extensive investigation into cartel agreements in the construction industry, the other parts of which have already been penalized by the ÚOHS with a final fine of 1.66 billion crowns and a pending fine of nearly 280 million crowns," Rafaj stated. A large cartel case with fines of nearly two billion crowns is pending at the Regional Court in Brno. Among the fined companies are, for example, Strabag and Eurovia.