The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's leniency policy has proven successful in breaking anticompetitive cartel conduct nationally and now it is the turn for the Northern Territory, ACCC Deputy Chair, Ms Louise Sylvan, said today in Darwin.
Ms Sylvan is speaking at tomorrow's NT Expo (Friday 25 June).
She encouraged whistle blowers to come forward so that cartel conduct, which may be damaging the NT economy and consumers, could be detected and stopped.
"The ACCC leniency policy encourages corporations and their executives to reveal serious contraventions of competition law such as price-fixing, bid-rigging and market sharing", she said. "The first company or executive that comes forward to reveal a cartel to the ACCC will receive a clear, transparent and certain offer of leniency.
"In the past the ACCC has provided leniency to NT firms and individuals who have co-operated with ACCC investigations which have led to the successful prosecution of other parties. In the Alice Springs car rental price fixing case two individuals were granted leniency and the other contraveners paid over $1.5 million in penalties".
Ms Sylvan also said that the recent $1 million penalty against a Western Australian brick company, Metro Brick, for price-fixing had shown the effectiveness of the leniency policy. The price-fixing behaviour was uncovered by the ACCC when it was approached by Midland Brick, the other party to the cartel conduct. As the whistleblower under the leniency policy, Midland Brick did not have to pay a pecuniary penalty for their own involvement in the price-fixing arrangement.
"The ACCC currently has more than 35 suspected cartels under investigation, ranging from sophisticated international operations to small scale local agreements to fix prices", Ms Sylvan said. "Hard core cartels are the very worst violations of competition law. They always hurt consumers and businesses by artificially inflating the price of goods and services".
Ms Sylvan urged NT whistle blowers on cartel conduct to contact the ACCC.
Ms Sylvan’s speech at the NT Expo, ACCC protection for whistle blowers, will provide details of the ACCC's leniency policy. It will also examine how the ACCC can work with the NT business community and will also discuss some of the major issues currently before the ACCC.
The ACCC has a dedicated fax number for companies or individuals that wish to make a leniency application on (02) 6243 1156.
Media inquiries
Ms Louise Sylvan, Deputy Chair, (02) 6243 1138 or 0410 610 326
Ms Lin Enright, Media, (02) 6243 1108or 0414 613 520
Additional contacts
Mr Derek Farrell, NT Regional Director, (08) 8946 9605
Release # MR 100/04
Issued: 24th June 2004
Background
The ACCC leniency policy was issued in June 2003. The key principles of the policy are:
where the ACCC is unaware of a cartel, the first person (company or individual) to come forward will receive an offer of conditional 'immunity' from ACCC-instituted court proceedings. However, the instigators of cartel conduct will not receive leniency from the ACCC.
where the ACCC is aware of a cartel but has insufficient evidence to institute court proceedings, the first person (company or individual) to come forward will receive an offer of conditional 'immunity' from pecuniary penalty.
The policy was based on leniency policies that have been successfully used internationally to break cartels in the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Canada and the European Commission.
