The Competition Council (KP) has punished three regional passenger carriers – Liepājas autobusu parks KSC (LAP), Nordeka JSC and Latvijas sabiedriskais autobuss LLC (LSA) – for engaging in prohibited agreement. All three are fined a total of EUR 1.975 million, as confirmed by KP on Wednesday, the 18th of January.
LAP is fined EUR 862 700, Nordeka is fined EUR 637 600, and LSA is fined EUR 474 600. The fine was applied for organising a secret agreement in procurements of Road Transport Administration (ATD) for public transport services using buses on regional routes for a period of 10 years.
KP concluded that LAP, Nordeka and LSA exchanged commercially sensitive information about sharing lots and various participation rules in procurements in order to secure service provision rights as close as possible to the limit stated in the procurements – 15 million km a year.
The council also concluded companies cooperated with one another individually and in union in regards to certain lots.
KP received initial information about the cartel agreement from market players. This information stated that before the procurement of the 26th of August 2019, Nordeka hosted a meeting of representatives from LAP, Nordeka and LSA to discuss participation.
This much is confirmed by data from mobile phone data of participants of the case,
which indicates that representatives either met in the offices of Nordeka or were near it on the aforementioned date.
During the meeting, participants were offered to pick a lot in the auction. After discussions of specific criteria for market shares, participants were offered to continue using their existing contracts and locations. Participants of the secret meeting also composed a table with all 16 lots with handwriting detailing more information regarding their possible distribution among participating sides.
LAP board chairman Leonīds Krongorns told LETA that his company plans to study KP’s decision before commenting on this situation.
«LAP complies with all requirements of the law in its operations. LAP denies accusations of having breached the Law on Competition. After a careful study of the decision, LAP will decide on legal protection means to protect our interests, prove our honesty and put to rest suspicions,» the company reported.
Nordeka representatives previously said they disagree with KP’s decision, adding that the company did not participate in any prohibited agreement that would be in breach of the Law on Competition or EU regulations.
Nordeka promised to provide more comments after studying the full text of KP’s decision.
ATD representatives told LETA that regulations of the Public Procurement Law that provide the measure of excluding contenders from procurement procedures are not applicable for already signed procurement contracts. This means ATD has no right to terminate already signed contracts based solely on decisions made by KP.
More on this topic: Competition Council fines three public transport service providers for cartel operations