Cigarette factory Philip Morris International, with a location in Bergen op Zoom, and three other cigarette manufacturers have to pay fines of more than 82 million euros in total. They have violated a so -called cartel ban.
According to the Board of Appeal for Business (CBB), they have made agreements on prices and new products. They knew how expensive cigarettes would be. Other competitors were not informed of this and were duped.
The fine was already imposed by the Netherlands Authority for Consumers & Markets (ACM) in 2020. The four companies had appealed, first at the court in Rotterdam and then at CBB, based in The Hague. The ruling that this right organ made on Tuesday is irrevocable and cannot be challenged. The companies will therefore have to pay.
27 million
The companies must be able to cough up the amounts without problems, because billions of euros are earned from the sale of smoking. For Philip Morris, the amount has been set at more than 27 million.
The ACM had discovered that between 2008 and 2011 the four companies had exchanged information about new products and prices. Other competitors were excluded from this. And that is against all rules.
The secretly shared data was used to determine the prices and possibly increase and thus make more profit. Not one of the four manufacturers came up with the idea of opposing this collaboration.
However, the companies did not want to accept the fine, because it all took so long now that there is a definitive statement. They also argued that it was for the first time that the ACM had acted against this kind of practices. That does not count, thinks the CBB. They could have known that they were wrong. The violations are so heavy that the fines are certainly not too high.