The year, one of the CNMC 's priorities continued to be the fight against cartels. 96% of the total volume of sanctions were against cartels (218 million euros). Thus, the CNMC uncovered Taiwan Phone Number List secret agreements between companies not to compete, consisting of price fixing, market or customer sharing, illicit exchanges of commercially sensitive information, and others. The rest of the fines were distributed in seven million to other infractions and the rest to fines for non-compliance.
Detection of cartels in public procurement
During the year, the CNMC intensified the detection of conduct prohibited by the Competition Law and that directly affects public procurement. The largest fine corresponded to the manufacturers of incontinence pads (AIO) for adults with a total fine of almost 130 million euros, including personal fines for the main managers involved. The cartel lasted from December 1996 until at least January 2014 and set the sales price of adult diapers financed by the National Health System . Urinary incontinence is a serious problem that affects approximately 2.5 million people in Spain.
Furthermore, in the field of public tenders, the CNMC fined a cartel with 5.64 million euros that affected the supply of railway bypasses in the competitions called for the construction of certain sections of the AVE. In these agreements, they fraudulently used the figure of Temporary Business Unions to commit the infringement.
Also in the area of public procurement, 15 companies specialized in international moving services were fined 4 million euros and this affected the transfers of State officials. The cartel lasted more than 15 years and prevented competition between companies when it came to offering international moving services for the personnel of various Ministries.
In the CNMC decided to promote the work started months before to fight against fraudulent bids or restrictive agreements between competitors who participate in public tenders. For this purpose, a working group was created to collect information on the detection of these practices. The CNMC gave 14 courses to around 750 officials from the public administrations most active in holding public tenders (Economic Management and Contracting of Agencies, State Advocacy and Delegated Intervention) with the aim of training public workers in the detection of fraudulent bids.
In addition, it published a practical guide to disseminate tools for detecting cases of fraudulent bidding among bidding organizations and encourage their collaboration with the CNMC.