Holman Fenwick Willan LLP- Freight forwarders cartel, applications for leniency, appeals and fines for infringing EU competition rules
Posted by- Neelam Mathews April 2012 Commission imposes fines totalling €169 million on freight forwarders in relation to four price fixing cartels On 28 March 2012, the European Commission (the “Commission”) fined 14 international groups of freight forwarding companies (“the forwarders”) a total of €169 million for their participation in four distinct cartels. Each cartel sought to fix the price of a specific surcharge related to the provision of international air freight forwarding services between 2002 and 2007 (when dawn raids were carried out by antitrust authorities in the United States and EU). The four cartels, according to the Commission’s findings, were as follows: The New Export System (NES) cartel - after the introduction of electronic declaration for UK exports in 2003, a group of forwarders agreed to establish a surcharge on this service and to fix its amount depending on the size of the customer. The Advance Manifest System...