The Federal cartel office closes investigation into Clemens tönnies group miss a million … – daily mirror

The Federal cartel office had to give in against two subsidiaries of the Meat factory owner Clemens Tönnies beaten. How the office announced on Wednesday, represents fines in the amount of 128 million euros, the corresponding procedures were set. The reason is that there are two companies, Böklunder Plumrose GmbH & co. KG and Könecke fleischwarenfabrik GmbH & co. KG, against which the fines have been taught. After an internal group restructuring of the lapsed To the mills group, you are.

The “sausage gap” in the law

The Westphalian family company, Tönnies is one of the largest slaughterhouses in Germany. In 2014 the Bundeskartellamt imposed due to price-fixing fines against 21 sausage manufacturers and 33 individuals. The two Tönnies subsidiary companies, but were deleted after the receipt of the penalty notice from the register of companies and assets to other companies of the transfer To the mills group. Tönnies denies this, however, is how the German press Agency reported: The restructuring had already begun prior to the receipt of the decision. Anyway, she was successful for Tönnies.
Andreas Mundt, President of the Federal cartel office, regretted the outcome of the proceedings: “We could have avoided this result.” That such a restructuring is possible at all, lies in the sausage cartel in the year 2014, the so-called “Sausage hole” – a gap in the law.

amendment of the arc is not even close in power

The already 2013, the revised act against restraints of competition (GWB) by the ninth amendment to this gap finally. The Federal Cabinet approved in September by the Federal Economics Ministry submitted a relevant draft. This provides for the introduction of a business-related sanction, as there is in European law. The responsibility for infringements of antitrust law should extend to legal and economic successor of the company, as well as the controlling parent company of the group.
Still, the GWB amendment is not in force. As a spokesman for the cartel office to notify, there are other procedures in which corporations have restructured, after they had received the appropriate notices. Here, too, fines in the millions. How many of them were, he said. Already in 2013, the Federal cartel office pointed out that the gap in the law allows this.