On April 26, the State Administration of Market Supervision and Administration issued guidelines for anti-monopoly compliance of operators. These Guidelines shall be interpreted by the Office of the Anti-monopoly and Anti-unfair Competition Committee of the State Council and shall be implemented as of the date of promulgation.
Among them, the following cases deserve the attention of the cement industry:
Reference Example 4: Enterprise A is an enterprise engaged in sand and gravel production and operation in a certain place, and has established a risk warning mechanism. With the intensification of sand and gravel competition and the decline of prices, local sand and gravel industry associations have organized many self-discipline meetings, requiring sand and gravel enterprises to avoid low-price competition. According to the feedback from the participants, Enterprise A judges that there may be compliance risk of monopoly agreement behavior, and assesses the risk level as high. To this end, Enterprise A timely pushes the research results to the general manager, deputy general manager, sales manager and other high-risk personnel who have more contacts with competitors through the mail system, reminding them not to exchange competitive sensitive information such as sales price and discount scheme with other employees of sand and gravel enterprises in meetings, communication and other activities, so as to effectively prevent the compliance risk of reaching monopoly agreements with competitors.
Reference example 11: In order to enhance the competitiveness of local related industries, an administrative organ in a city requires eight enterprises in the city to cooperate, form a joint venture, divide sales areas, fix sales prices and avoid competition with each other. Eight enterprises signed cooperation agreements accordingly, made detailed arrangements for relevant requirements, and stipulated penalties for violating the agreements. The relevant practices of an administrative organ in a city violate Article 44 of the Anti-monopoly Law, which stipulates that "administrative organs and organizations authorized by laws and regulations with the functions of managing public affairs shall not abuse their administrative power to force or disguise operators to engage in monopolistic acts as stipulated in this Law". Although the eight enterprises implemented the requirements of the administrative organs, they still violated the provisions of Article 17 of the Anti-monopoly Law that "operators with competitive relations are prohibited from reaching the following monopoly agreements: (1) fixing or changing commodity prices; (3) dividing the sales market or the raw material procurement market", and should bear the corresponding legal responsibilities.
Reference example 13: Under the organization of a trade association, a number of operators with competitive relationship in the industry, including enterprise a, discuss the sales price of relevant commodities through meetings, consultations and other means, and sign a self-discipline convention to unify the price. Subsequently, trade associations promoted the implementation of the Convention by organizing self-examination and accountability. With the establishment of the compliance management system of Enterprise A, the compliance management department found in the risk investigation that the above acts were suspected of violating the provisions of the Anti-monopoly Law prohibiting the conclusion and implementation of monopoly agreements, and that there were serious anti-monopoly compliance risks, and immediately reported to the Compliance Committee. After the special study, the Compliance Committee took the initiative to report to the anti-monopoly law enforcement agencies on the conclusion of monopoly agreements, and submitted relevant evidence for the signing and implementation of industry self-discipline conventions. The act of a trade association organizing the operators of the industry to reach and implement a monopoly agreement violates the provisions of Article 21 of the Anti-monopoly Law that "a trade association shall not organize the operators of the industry to engage in monopolistic acts prohibited by this Chapter"; The participation and implementation of monopoly agreements by operators in the industry violates the provisions of Article 17 of the Anti-monopoly Law that "operators with competitive relations are prohibited from reaching the following monopoly agreements: (1) fixing or changing commodity prices". According to the Anti-monopoly Law, a fine of less than 3 million yuan shall be imposed on trade associations, and a fine of more than 1% and less than 10% of the sales of the previous year shall be imposed on operators participating in monopoly agreements. As the first operator who voluntarily reports the relevant information of the monopoly agreement and provides important evidence, the anti-monopoly law enforcement agency may mitigate or exempt the punishment of enterprise a according to the provisions of the Anti-monopoly Law.
