Colombia: “Surveillance Cartel” companies caught again in price-fixing scheme

Colombia’s Superintendence for Industry and Commerce (SIC) has filed charges against eight private security and surveillance companies that allegedly agreed to pretend to be competitors in public tenders, when in fact they were in coordination as part of the so-called ‘SMG Group’.

“The SIC is investigating possible anticompetitive practices (collusion) in 26 contractual processes that total more than $30 billion pesos,” said the superintendent Delegate for the Protection of Competition (ad-hoc), Fidel Puentes Silva.

Seven of the companies being investigated, as well as 17 of their executives, had already been fined over $ 26 billion pesos (US $ 8.7 million) last April, also due to illegal agreements in state tenders. The companies currently under the scope are Guardianes, Starcoop, Cobasec, Centinel, Expertos Insevig and Security Management Group.
Full Content: El Colombiano

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