Ecuador/Colombia: Ecuador reaches out in tissue paper cartel investigation

Ecuador’s authorities, through the market and competition regulator SCPM, have issued a request to the General Secretary of the Andean Community for support in their investigation of the possible effects of price-fixing practices in the tissue paper industry in a scheme which has embroiled most of South America.

Ecuadorean authorities argue in their request that the cartel’s effects would have affected their own market through the local branches of colombian and chilean – based Kimberly, SA and Productos Familia.

Colombia’s Superintendence for Industry and Commerce, the local competition enforcer, imposed heavy fines on their local branches of Kimberly, Familia, Papeles Nacionales and local makers Papeles Risaralda earlier this year. The companies, along with their Chilean counterparts, enacted a decade long scheme to continuously coordinate increases in soft-tissue paper prices for consumers, ending the scheme in 2013.

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