President of the Commission for Protection of Competition of the Republic of Serbia Dr. Miloje Obradović and Goran Petrović, Deputy Chairman of the Council of the Regulatory Authority for Electronic Media, signed the Cooperation Agreement between the two institutions.

The implementation of this agreement creates potentials for more intensive cooperation between the Commission, as an autonomous and independent organization performing public competences in accordance with the Law on Protection of Competition, and the REM, as an autonomous and independent regulatory organization performing public competences in accordance with the provisions of the Law on Electronic Media, with a view to protect public interest and strengthen the integrity of these authorities.

The agreement stipulates continuous exchange of information and data, as well as bringing into accord of positions on issues of common interest, in addition to the joint involvement in policy recognition-related activities implemented by the Commission and REM.

The Commission’s cooperation with institutions with whom agreements on cooperation were signed in the previous period is established as extremely beneficial, foremost in terms of data exchange potentials, but also in the context of exchange of positions on all current topics or proceedings conducted before the Commission or other authorities and institutions.

The Commission for Protection of Competition established that companies „MIP-RŠV“ from Ćuprija, „Inter-mehanika“ from Skorenovac, „Tatravagonka bratstvo“ from Subotica and „Šinvoz“ from Zrenjanin have infringed competition by bid rigging in the public procurement procedure – Arbel type freight cars maintenance, published by the ordering party „Termoelektrane Nikola Tesla“ (TENT).

In the proceeding conducted ex officio, the Commission established that these companies have agreed on price fixing in a bid rigging scheme. Thus they have concluded a special form of restrictive agreement within the meaning of Article 10, paragraph 1 and 2, item 1) of the Law on Protection of Competition.

The objective of “collusive tendering” was for each bidder to generate maximum profits from the operation by offering a pre-agreed lowest price, risk-free from not winning the lot in tendering procedure with other participating bidders or from a necessity to offer considerably lower price from the collusively agreed one needed to win the bid.

The consequence of such agreement between competitors – bidders in regards to the offered price was to eliminate mutual competition, causing TENT to pay over the odds for the related procurement vis-à-vis the real competitive conditions, withal causing detrimental effects on the Budget of the Republic of Serbia.

The Commission established the existence of restrictive agreement both based on economic indicators such as statistical data and offered prices analysis in addition to the identification of structural market indicators, and on the intelligence collected during a dawn raid and in other manners, as well as based on derived and substantiated evidence confirming the indication of existing agreement between these four bidders.

The Commission imposed monetary fines as a measure for protection of competition to the said companies, specifically in the amount of RSD 2,320,480.00 to company „MIP-RŠV“, RSD 1,475,000.00 to company „Inter-mehanika“, RSD 2,138,900.00 to company „Tatravagonka bratstvo“, and RSD 4,975,020.00 to company „Šinvoz“.

The Commission assessed that the parties have cooperated with the Commission throughout the entire investigation procedure towards faster, more efficient and cost-effective termination of the proceeding, which is taken as a mitigating circumstance when establishing the final amount of a measure for protection of competition.

The said companies are obligated to execute payments in the above-mentioned amounts to the Budget account of the Republic of Serbia within three months period.