Who's Pulling the Strings? Road Construction's Hidden Gangsters Exposed
- Let's roll 😈
Unlawful practices in road construction: Federal Competition Authority imposes substantial penalty - Million-dollar penalty handed down by the Federal Cartel Office
Believe it or not, the seemingly competitive world of road construction in Germany has been hiding a dark secret: illegal cartel agreements 🤫. Yeah, you heard that right! A few crooked companies were throwing a wrench in the system from 2016 to 2019, according to the Federal Cartel Office, the official watchdog for antitrust law enforcement.
Andreas Mundt, the boss man at the Bonn-based authority, put it bluntly: "These companies were fixing prices before tenders, deciding who'd win each one." Sometimes, they'd even go so far as to submit bogus bids with pre-agreed minimum amounts—talk about nerve!
Mundt explained that these cartel agreements meant the public sector was getting overcharged, and citizens ended up bearing the brunt of those excess costs. He stressed that fair competition is essential for keeping the public sector's expenses as lean and efficient as possible, so these illegal shenanigans were a major blow to the system.
In a couple of instances, four companies pooled together to control the road construction market in Saxony, Thuringia, and Saxony-Anhalt, using secret codes to assign tenders and cover bids. The orders these companies snagged were mostly small-scale repair jobs or supplied bitumen emulsion or gravel, typically ranging from 40k to 200k euros in value.
It gets worse—another group of four companies joined forces to manipulate tenders in Brandenburg and Saxony-Anhalt, with occasional involvement in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, over the same period. One of these shady companies was involved in both schemes.
But, don't think these crooks got away scot-free! The Federal Cartel Office, working side by side with the Public Prosecutor's Office in Düsseldorf, launched a raids party in 2019. One of the companies came clean and cut a deal, collaborating under the leniency program.
- Federal Cartel Office
- ** Secret Cartel Agreements Exposed**
- Road Construction DITION: ILLEGAL EDITION
- Andreas Mundt
- Bonn-based Authority
- ** Sly Companies in the Game of Thrones**
- ** Saxony, Thuringia, Saxony-Anhalt, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern**
- The illegal cartel agreements revealed by the Federal Cartel Office in Germany, led by Andreas Mundt, involved numerous companies manipulating tenders in the road construction industry.
- These malicious activities, which included price-fixing and submitting false bids, resulted in the public sector being overcharged, with taxpayers ultimately paying the cost.
