Turkey's Competition Board recently concluded its investigations in the Turkish motor vehicles sector and imposed record fines, according to an article on Mondaq (free subscription) by Gönenç Gürkaynak of ELIG, Attorneys-at-Law, who represented Mercedes-Benz Türk A.Ş.
The Authority launched an investigation against 23 passenger car and light commercial vehicle companies in September 2009, suspecting that a cartel was being operated contrary to the Competition Law. The undertakings it investigated were suspected of having discussed future pricing policies, stock data, sales targets and sales strategies.
The Board decided that the investigated undertakings violated Article 4 of the Competition Law (in similar terms to Article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and Chapter 1 of the UK's Competition Act 1998) and imposed financial penalties on 15 undertakings, totalling approximately 277 million TL. This is by far the largest amount of fine that has ever been imposed by the Board.
