Colombia: SIC files cartel charges in road construction collusion case

Colombia’s Superintendence of Industry and Commerce has gathered sufficient evidence to file formal charges against construction company Conconcreto “for collusion or cartelization and other anticompetitive practices” in the bidding process for building the third lane of the Bogotá – Girardot highway, announced superintendent Pablo Felipe Robledo.

The regulator also presented charges against eight individuals linked to the companies involved, including Benton, China Gezhouba, Alberto Solarte, Cass Constructores and Vicci Concesiones Colombia.

According to the Superintendency’s findings, both “plural structures” “jointly coordinated their offers, in such a way that one would be complementary to the other,” Robledo clarified. Benton and China Gezhouba would have presented proposals “with no possibility of success whatsoever, artificially low (kamikaze), and whose only purpose was to affect, illegally and uncompetitively, the bidding in favor of Conconcreto”.

Finally, the SIC claimed to have evidence indicating that Juan Luis Aristizábal, the president of Conconcreto, had ordered materials destroyed and attempted to hide information during SIC’s dawn raid carried out in 2016.

Full Content: El Colombiano

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