Warsaw (Puls Biznesu) – The Office for Competition and Consumers’ Protection UOKiK controls yeast producers, cement companies, paint producers and retailers.
UOKiK is working as hard as it has never had before. Cezary Banasinski, UOKiK CEO fined French Lesaffre Bio-Corporation, Poland’s biggest yeast producer with over PLN 3m because of illegal agreement it signed with 45 wholesalers.
“They were obliged to buy yeast from this company only. The other producers are thus eliminated from the market while the dominant producer influences the conditions and prices”, Monika Bychowska from UOKiK explained.
The French producer has continued illegal practices for the last three years.
The fine is small, however, in comparison with fines which may be paid by 11 cement producers, currently investigated by UOKiK, including Lafarge Cement, Grupa Ożarów, Ekocem, Górażdże Cement, Cemex, Rejowiec, Chełm, Nowiny, Warta, Nowa Huta and Odra. They are suspected for a cartel, stating sales conditions, division of the market and exchanging secret data. “PB” has already written about it. It looks like fines may be high here.
“We have hard evidence. The fines may be quite high”, Cezary Banasinski believed.
The other investigations are conducted against paint producers (ICI, NObiles and TBD) and do-it-yourself markets cooperating with them, including Castorama and Praktiker. All the companies investigated may be fined with jointly PLN 258m (EUR 66.6m).
(PLN 1 = EUR 0.258)
Competition authorities UOKiK fight against cartels
Warsaw (Puls Biznesu) – The Office for Competition and Consumers’ Protection UOKiK controls yeast producers, cement companies, paint producers and retailers. UOKiK is working as hard as it has never had before.