Competition Commission begins probe into pump firms

The Competition Commission said on Tuesday that it has launched a probe into possible antitrust violations among companies supplying fuel for vehicles.

“The ongoing investigation into auto-fuel cases is something which we decided to do in view of the fact that there is a reasonable cause to suspect that certain anti-competitive behaviours might exist within certain players in the market,” said the commission’s chairman, Samuel Chan.

Chan said he cannot divulge more details as the investigation is ongoing.

“All I can say is that this is something that we would devote a lot of time and energy and resources,” he said.

The commission also announced that it has initiated action against two public housing cleaning service contractors for alleged price-fixing.

It alleged that Hong Kong Commercial Cleaning Services and Man Shun Hong Kong and Kowloon Cleaning Company colluded with each other when making bids for 17 Housing Authority tenders from May 2016 to August 2018, with the contracts worth about HK$180 million.

A probe by the commission showed that both companies had shared common offices, IT access, as well as identical pricing and common mistakes in their tender documents.

The commission also accused the firms of obstructing its probe, and referred the case to the police for criminal investigation.

“We have reasons to believe that they had tried to delete quite a large number of documents which we believe are relevant to our investigation,” said the commission’s CEO, Rasul Butt.

He said the commission has asked the Competition Tribunal to fine the firms and disqualify three directors of the companies.