Recently, the Supreme People's Court issued a typical anti-monopoly case of the People's Court in 2026, one of which is related to the concrete industry. The details are as follows:
The fines for the crime of forced trading generally do not affect the anti-monopoly administrative fines
-a company and a provincial market supervision and administration Bureau, Anti-monopoly Administrative Penalty and Administrative Reconsideration Bill
of the State Administration of Market Supervision and Administration [Basic Case]
Some concrete enterprises in a certain place set up a "concrete association". Under the proposal and leadership of Kong Mou, the actual controller of a company, 21 local concrete enterprises raised the selling price of commercial concrete for many times.
A company has set up a sales company to formulate and implement management rules such as "quota formulation to sales", "high traffic and low compensation" and "no private expansion of production" in the name of "concrete association". Kong and others also set up a "service team" to force the construction party to exclude foreign enterprises by means of reporting, verbal threats and obstruction of construction. In November
2020, the People's Court made a criminal judgment that a company committed the crime of forced trading and sentenced it to a fine of 30 million yuan; Kong committed the crime of organizing and leading a mafia-style organization, the crime of forced trading and the crime of provoking trouble, and was sentenced to 13 years'imprisonment and confiscation of all personal property. In July
2023, a provincial market supervision and administration Bureau made an administrative penalty decision, confirming that a company had reached and implemented a monopoly agreement to fix commodity prices, divide the sales market and limit the quantity of commodity production and sales, and imposed a fine of 5% of its sales in 2017, totaling more than 27 million yuan.
A company refused to accept it and applied to the State Administration of Market Supervision and Administration for administrative reconsideration, which decided to maintain the original penalty decision. A company refused to accept and filed an administrative lawsuit, claiming that the defendant's punishment decision violated the principle of "no more punishment for one thing", that the same act had been sentenced to a fine by the previous criminal judgment, and that the administrative fine should not be imposed again, and that the base of the fine should be deducted from the sales of the crime of forced trading identified by the criminal judgment, requesting the revocation of the defendant's punishment decision.
[Judgment Result]
The Beijing Intellectual Property Court held in the first instance that the act of reaching and implementing a monopoly agreement was not the same illegal act as the crime of forced trading, and that the fine imposed on a company for the crime of forced trading did not affect the separate fine imposed on a company for the act of monopolizing an agreement according to law, and the judgment rejected the company's claim.
A company refused to accept and appealed. In the second instance, the Supreme People's Court held that the negative evaluation of the criminal law on the illegal and criminal acts of the relevant individuals and the qualitative and evaluation of the anti-competitive acts of the relevant operators by the anti-monopoly law are independent and can be determined and evaluated separately in principle. The second paragraph of Article 35 of the Administrative Punishment Law of the
People's Republic of China stipulates that the penalty offset is based on the premise of "the same illegal act", and the crime of forced transaction is obviously different from the horizontal monopoly agreement in terms of objective behavior: the former occurs between the two parties to the transaction by means of violence or coercion; The latter occurs between competitors in the same industry, characterized by agreements or concerted acts that exclude or restrict competition and are not conditional on violence. The composition of the
two acts, the protection of legal interests and the purpose of regulation are different, and generally do not belong to the "same illegal act". Moreover, the transaction items involved in the prior criminal judgment and the defendant's decision in this case do not coincide completely. Therefore, the fine imposed by the people's court on the crime of forced trading does not affect the fine imposed by the anti-monopoly law enforcement agency on the act of monopoly agreement in this case.
With regard to the base of fines, the damage of horizontal monopolistic behavior to market competition is comprehensive and long-term. When calculating the "sales of the previous year", the objective amount should be taken as the base of fines, and there is no need to assess whether the price of a single transaction is affected by monopolistic behavior and exclude it from the sales of the previous year. Therefore, the final judgment rejected the appeal and upheld the original judgment.
[Typical Significance]
This case examines whether the prior criminal fine and the subsequent anti-monopoly administrative fine violate the principle of "no more punishment for one thing" in the Administrative Punishment Law, systematically explains the criteria for judging "the same illegal act", and clarifies that the criminal fine and the anti-monopoly administrative fine can generally be applied in parallel. It provides reference and guidance for the organic connection between administrative law enforcement and criminal justice in the field of anti-monopoly. This case highlights the zero-tolerance attitude of law enforcement and justice towards monopoly, which is of positive significance for severely punishing horizontal monopoly agreements and ensuring free and fair competition in the market.
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