Indecopi: fines for abuse of dominant position were higher than S/60 million

He National Institute for the Defense of Competition and the Protection of Intellectual Property (Indecopi) reported that since the Merger Control Law came into force, 27 requests have been received, of which 22 were approved, one was withdrawn, another authorized with conditions due to the risks warned, and three are in process.

They have also implemented the sanction and investigation for acts of abuse of a dominant positionwhich are unilateral conduct by one or several companies with a presence in the market to unfairly restrict competition.

“(Indecopi) investigates and penalizes anti-competitive behaviors such as cartels, secret agreements between competing companies to raise prices to consumers and fix the results of tenders, when Indecopi discovers these behaviors it penalizes drastically and severely, imposing fines greater than the benefits they expected to obtain as a consequence of these practices”, specified Jesús Espinoza Lozada, national director of Investigation and Promotion of Free Competition during the Constitution Commission of the Congress of the Republic on Tuesday, March 28.

Among the cases mentioned for the sanction by cartel modality is the ‘Construction Club’, which was fined S/2,749 million, and the ‘GNV Cartel’, whose penalty amounted to S/459 million.

Along these lines, the entity reported that, in recent years, in terms of abuse of a dominant position, a penalty was imposed on the company Cementos Yura S.A., for more than S/60 million, for preventing the permanence of competitors in the cement marketing market in the south of the country. Likewise, the company Racionalización Empresarial SA (Raciemsa) was fined S/4.6 million for abusing a dominant position against other competing companies.