Competition, Latvia, Legislation

The Competition Council started probing the case after Valsts Nekustamie Ipasumi (VNI, Public Properties), the manager of public properties in Latvia, filed an application in which it pointed to some suspicious similarities in the bids submitted by the above companies in a VNI tender.

The Competition Council established hat from 2011 to 2016 the four companies had been coordinating their bids in eight tenders to provide security services, including one public tender organized VNI, one held by Riga Hospital No 1, two tenders held by Riga Technical University and four tenders organized by the University of Latvia.

Nivios-LTD, Puma and Lat Jur Fin either submitted bids prepared by Bruks, or worked out their bids in coordination with Bruks. As a result of these coordinated actions, their clients did not receive competitive bids and were misled about the actual competition situation.

The Competition Council fined Bruks with EUR 29,250, Nivios-LTD with 39,676, Puma with EUR 3,250 and Lat Jur Fin with EUR 6,368 for crippling competition.