The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has investigated 35 cartel cases in the last five years, minister of finance and corporate affairs Nirmala Sitharaman told the Lok Sabha on Monday.
The minister said that a new mechanism, known as “lesser penalty plus” (LPP), was introduced last year that incentivises the disclosures of cartels. “The LPP mechanism was introduced to incentivise an existing lesser penalty applicant in respect of a cartel to give full, true, and vital disclosures about another cartel, hitherto not in the knowledge of the CCI,” she said.
To further widen the scope of cartel investigation, a hub-and-spoke mechanism was brought in through the Amendment Act 2023 which provides that an enterprise or association of enterprises (or a person or association of persons) though not engaged in identical or similar trade shall also be presumed to be part of the agreement under this mechanism if it participates or intends to participate in the furtherance of such agreement.
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Recently, the CCI conducted raids and interrogations at media agencies, including GroupM, Interpublic, Publicis, and Dentsu for their alleged involvement in price fixing. The raids were part of the “leniency scheme” of the commission under which the regulator gives relaxation to the whistleblower firms in exchange of sharing information about cartels.
Sitharaman also said that CCI has signed bilateral and multilateral agreements with various regions (Egypt, Mauritius, BRICS, Japan, Brazil, Canada, Australia and United States Department of Justice) for cooperation in the field of competition law and policy.
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