Chile: Supermarkets present witnesses in collusion trial

Supermarket chains Walmart, Cencosud and SMU, accused of forming a 3-year price-fixing cartel, have presented the Tribunal for the Defense of Free Competition (TDLC) their final list of declaring witnesses for their trial, which is expected to drag on to early 2017. Noted figures among the list include Alejandro Jadrecic, Dean of the Engineering Faculty at the Universidad Alfonso Ibañez, and Karen Thal Silberstein, a psychologist and current Manager at research firm CADEM.

According to the playbook approved by the TDLC, Chile’s economic prosecutor FNE will take the first shot. Key witnesses will be called on December 13, with Juan Carlos Gosen Sara, Walmart’s Manager for Food, Consumables and Pet Products, being the star witness.

Competition regulator FNE has accused the supermarkets of having taken part in a market-distorting agreement to set minimum sale prices for fresh chicken meat, in place between 2008 and 2011. Prosecutors from the FNE have said their aim in this process will be to “rebalance the market” and “avoid a pricing war,” for which it has requested the maximum allowable fine for cases of price-fixing: 30,000 UTA’s, equivalent to $23 million USD for each offending company.

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