OTTAWA, January 8, 2001 – The Competition Bureau announced today that the Federal Court of Canada has imposed a fine of $800,000 on the company Freyssinet Limitée for an international bid-rigging scheme relating to the Hibernia project in St. John’s Newfoundland.
Another company, VSL Corporation based in Switzerland, carrying on business in Canada through its wholly-owned subsidiary ICS Inc., was granted immunity in return for being the first to approach the Bureau with information on the bid-rigging case.
“This is an excellent example of the effectiveness of the Bureau’s Immunity Program in fighting conspiracies to rig bids,” said Johanne D’Auray, Deputy Commissioner of Competition. “We continue to actively investigate the conduct of other alleged co-conspirators involved in this agreement.”
Freyssinet Limitée, headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, pleaded guilty to rigging a bid to supply and install a system to reinforce the concrete base of the Hibernia Development project. In imposing this fine, the Court took into consideration the fact that the company cooperated fully with the Bureau’s investigation. In addition to the fine, the Court imposed an Order prohibiting this company from committing or repeating this offence in Canada.
Bid-rigging is an agreement whereby one or more bidders on a contract do not submit bids or where those who do bid on the contract agree to submit a pre-arranged price. It is considered an offence only if the parties to the agreement fail to make their intentions known to the potential purchaser before submitting their bids. The Competition Bureau offers an education
program to assist in the detection and prevention of bid-rigging.
Copies of the documents filed before the Federal Court in Ottawa are available on the Competition Bureau”s Web site at
http://competition.ic.gc.ca. Certified copies of the filed documents may be obtained from the Court Registries – (Court File Number T-2389-00.).
The Competition Bureau is an independent law enforcement agency whose mandate is to maintain and encourage fair competition in Canada.
