Austria’s largest construction company, Strabag, has been sentenced to a cartel fine in Germany. The German Federal Cartel Office has imposed a fine of 2.79 million euros on Strabag AG, based in the Rhine Metropolis, due to prohibited agreements in the tender for a construction project in Cologne.
The competition authority announced on Wednesday that the agreements were made in connection with the renovation of the zoo bridge.
Employees of Strabag AG and Kemna Bau Andreae, based in Pinneberg near Hamburg, were involved. They agreed that Kemna would submit a protective bid during the tender, so that the contract could be awarded to a bidding consortium with the participation of Strabag. Kemna received compensation for this.
According to the German Federal Cartel Office, this is a so-called bidding agreement. Such illegal cartel arrangements ensure that tender procedures do not lead to quality and price competition as intended, Cartel Office Chairman Andreas Mundt explained. “According to estimates, bid rigging alone causes damage of several billion euros per year to public sector construction projects in Germany.”
The Bonn authority explained that the proceedings against Strabag AG were initiated following an anonymous tip to the Federal Cartel Office. The proceedings against Kemna under the leniency program were stopped because the company only made it possible to prove the crime by submitting evidence. During the proceedings, Strabag AG also cooperated with the cartel office and ultimately agreed to terminate the proceedings. The fine notification is legally binding.
According to the Cartel Office, the case, which dates back to early 2017, was raided in September 2021. In December of the same year, Strabag AG became a 100 percent subsidiary of the Viennese construction group Strabag SE, which has owned the majority of the traditional Cologne group since 1997 has in hand.
Source: Krone
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