The list of the 35 companies that were involved in investigations regarding the fraudulent bidding is not a novelty, says Bogdan Chirițoiu, the president of the Competition Council.

“The information in the table is not new, we did not come with anything extra. Everything that appeared now was already public, we just grouped the information, we centralized it. We did this to help the contracting authorities in enforcing the law on public procurement. This legislation, which transposes a European Directive, stipulates that those companies that have committed serious infringements of the law, including those related to competition, namely the rigging of tenders, are prohibited from participating in public procurement procedures for three years from the moment the violation is found,” said Bogdan Chirițoiu, according to financialintelligence.ro.

“As regards the competition sanction, the prohibition applies from the moment the Competition Council finds the violation of the law and not from the court’s decision. The measure would become obsolete if the term were calculated from the moment of the court’s decision and would enter into force after many years after committing the deed.

”But we do not want to restrict competition and that is why companies have the possibility, according to the public procurement law, to avoid this three-year sanction. Thus, they can avoid the penalty if they have collaborated with the competition authority, if they have a compliance program, they train their employees, if they apply rules that allow them not to make mistakes,” he added.

“If they collaborated with us, acknowledging the violation of the law or come up with evidence to help us detect and sanction other anti-competitive acts, then enter the leniency program and receive a lower fine and have an extra advantage because they get rid of this ban on bidding for three years. As I said, we did this centralization to help contracting authorities find out more quickly which to exclude from public procurement procedures and which not. The publication of this list is in fact for the benefit of companies because it helps them to participate in tenders even if they have been sanctioned by us.”