The Competition Council announced on Monday that it had imposed sanctions on Dataware Consulting, Kontron Services Romania and Tema Energy with fines totaling approximately 20.5 million lei (approximately 4.1 million euros) for participating with falsified bids in an auction organized by Ministry of Internal Affairs (MAI) to create a center for the provision of electronic services.

Bohdan ChirytoyPhoto: AGERPRES

Fines were applied as follows:

  • DATAWARE CONSULTING SRL – 2,321,589.12 lei,
  • KONTRON SERVICES ROMANIA SRL – 16,023,559.65 lei,
  • TEMA ENERGY SA – 2,169,079.81 lei.

The Competition Council claims that “according to the results of the investigation launched in 2021, it established that three companies coordinated their behavior during the participation in the public tender for the development and implementation of the project “Hub Servicii (center for the provision of electronic services) at the level of the Ministry of Internal Affairs” .

Thus, the three companies exchanged confidential information about their intentions to participate in the auction and coordinated their commercial policies and strategies not to submit bids in order to increase the budget allocated by the Ministry of the Interior for the implementation of the project. »

  • “In this case, MAI was the customer that organized the auction and was not part of the anti-competitive agreement that took place between July 2020 and January 2021.” the Competition Council emphasizes.

The investigation was closed against the companies PORR CONSTRUCT SRL, REGIA AUTONOMA RASIROM, M&D CONS INVESTIŢII SRL, METROUL SA, NESS PROIECT EUROPE SRL, GENERAL ME.EL ELECTRIC SRL, STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY SRL, TANCRAD SRL and ROVIS LIDER SRL, as no sufficient evidence of a breach of competition law to justify the application of measures or sanctions by the Competition Council.

As a reminder, the competition law prohibits any agreements between companies and concerted practices that prevent, limit or distort competition in the Romanian market, especially those that fix purchase or sale prices or any other terms of trade.

The decisions of the Competition Council are subject to enforcement, and the applied fines are revenues to the state budget. The National Agency for Tax Administration (ANAF) implements the decision of the antimonopoly authority on the application of sanctions and enforces fines.