Germany’s antitrust regulator Bundeskartellamt has fined 14 construction companies and 12 individuals for illegal bid rigging in construction contract award procedures.
The fines and liability amounts imposed total approximately €4.8m ($5.26m).
The illegal agreements involved a list of contracts awarded by three companies between 2007 and 2017.
The list includes 42 contracts worth €24m granted by Hüttenwerke Krupp Mannesmann (HKM) between August 2011 to November 2016.
From March 2007 to February 2017, 122 contracts worth €32m were also awarded by ThyssenKrupp (TK) Steel Europe.
Lastly, the list includes 14 contracts worth €4m awarded between 2014 to late 2016 by Deutsche Edelstahlwerke (DEW).
Bundeskartellamt president Andreas Mundt said: “For years the companies concerned maintained a system of mutually agreeing on who would be awarded which construction contract, to the detriment of the contracting entities.
“The agreements followed the same pattern in all three proceedings: First, the participating companies agreed in person or over the phone on who was to secure a particular contract. The company which was to get the contract then made its own calculations.
“The next step was to send these calculations to the other participating companies to make sure they would make higher sham offers to secure the contract for the agreed company.”
The initiation of the proceedings resulted from a leniency application submitted by Hermann Kassens Bauunternehmung, one of the companies that has been fined.
The case against this company was subsequently dropped as part of the leniency programme.
Echterhoff, Eiffage, Maas, Fenne, Gehrken, Möllmann, and T&M were fined for engaging in anticompetitive agreements in the TK proceedings.
IHT, Maas, Mainka, BeMo, Eiffage, Fenne, and Rostek & Pesch faced fines in the HKM proceedings while Korte, Fenne, Karger, and Maas received fines in the DEW proceedings.
Mainka and Rostek & Pesch were the only companies that did not cooperate or file for leniency in the proceedings.
Additionally, all companies, except Fenne, reached a settlement. In the HKM proceedings, only Fenne partially agreed to a settlement.
