Baker McKenzie has successfully represented Minova Ekochem before the Warsaw Court of Appeal in an anti-competitive practices dispute with the President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (OCCP).
Minova is a UK-headquartered provider of ground support solutions for the underground mining, construction, tunneling, and civil engineering industry sectors. The company has manufacturing plants on five continents and operates in more than 25 countries.
According to the firm, the OCCP alleged that Minova was involved in "an illicit anti-competitive agreement consisting of (i) price-fixing, (ii) market sharing, and (iii) bid-rigging on the mining chemicals market." As a result, the President of the OCCP imposed a financial penalty of several million dollars.
According to Baker McKenzie, the court found that "the witness statements on which the President of the OCCP based [their] decisions were not credible, the economic analysis used by the Office was flawed, the relevant market was determined incorrectly, not all parties were included in the antitrust investigation, the financial penalty was calculated and imposed unlawfully, and, most importantly, that the evidence gathered in the case was not sufficient to establish the existence of an agreement in the case in question, and in addition, the antitrust statute of limitations had run its course."
"This is the first proceeding in which the President of the OCCP used economic analysis as evidence of the existence of a cartel, and in which the OCCP held that in horizontal agreements (cartels) the Office should establish the full circle of participants to the alleged agreement," Baker McKenzie informed. "Moreover, the Court of Appeal confirmed that the failures by the President of OCCP to determine the relevant market in the case cannot be remedied in court proceedings and must result in a revocation of the decision."
The Baker McKenzie team was led by Partner Marcin Trepka and included Counsel Elzbieta Buczkowska, Associate Martyna Wurm, and Trainee Lucja Olszewska.
