The Competition Council (CC) will make public, next week, the result of a probe into the fuel market, the president of the institution, Bogdan Chiritoiu announced yesterday, quoted by Mediafax. “The report makes distinction between companies. There are differences betweens the actions of the probed companies, and the law says that the initiator (of an anti-competition act) will face a harsher sanction,” Chiritoiu said Wednesday, after a hearing with the legal representatives of the companies under investigation. The most severe sanction the Council may order is a fine equivalent to 10 pc of the turnover. The report does not recommend the maximum fine for any of the probed companies, but the plenum may still decide it. “However, in practice, the decision made by the plenum is not very different from what the report recommends,” the CC president added. According to Chiritoiu, the companies have not been informed about the decision so far. In a different move, the Council ordered last year fines worth a cumulated EUR 80 M, accounting for 80 pc of the sanctions ruled by the institution in 14 years of activity, Bogdan Chiritoiu mentioned. “The activity of the Council stabilised in 2011, we finalised a series of probes that could be seen in the volume of fines we ordered, which nears 80 pc of what the Council ordered during its 14 years in activity, i.e. EUR 80 M.” Chiritoiu added that Romania is among the few countries that criminalises the infringements of the Competition Law, HotNews reports.
