Moldova fines six fuel companies $27 million for price fixing

The Moldovan Competition Authority has imposed fines totaling 481.4 million lei (27 million USD/25 million euro) on six local fuel retailers for participating in an anti-competitive agreement. The fined companies are Lukoil Moldova, Bemol Retail, Datario, Petrom Moldova, Rompetrol Moldova and Tirex Petrol.

The investigation, which began in 2021, revealed that these retailers coordinated prices of petroleum products sold to customers. Between 2019 and 2021, the companies made several rounds of price changes of identical value, both consecutively and simultaneously.

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“The arguments put forward by the companies were not accepted by the Competition Council because the justifications they put forward could not credibly explain similar behaviour in several companies. The Council therefore considered that such behaviour would be impossible in the absence of an agreement between competitors,” the Competition Council stated.

The fines are as follows:

• Bemol Retail: 29 million lei
• Datario: 1.1 million lei
• Tirex Petrol: 1.5 million lei
• Petrom Moldova (a division of Romanian OMV Petrom): 77.8 million lei
• Rompetrol Moldova (subsidiary of KMG International Group): 191.8 million lei
• Lukoil Moldova (a branch of Russian Lukoil): 180.2 million lei

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