Public Procurement Service Cracks Down with Firm Measures: Requests Prosecution for Bid Rigging and Recovers Unfair Profits

[Asia Economy (Daejeon) Reporter Jeong Il-woong] On the 22nd, the Public Procurement Service announced that it decided to request prosecution and recover unfair profits from seven companies caught engaging in unfair procurement practices such as bid rigging and violations of direct production requirements.

First, four companies were caught colluding in public institution bids, and the Public Procurement Service plans to request the Fair Trade Commission to prosecute these companies for violating the Fair Trade Act.

Among the detected companies, three participated in the annual unit price contract bidding for rebar, and instead of competing for orders, they agreed in advance on allocated quantities and bid prices, executing these agreements to conclude contracts worth approximately 92.7 billion KRW.

Additionally, one company supplying sports equipment was confirmed to have participated in the bidding for sports equipment for the National Sports Festival every year from 2016 to 2019, agreeing in advance with other participants on the expected winning bidder and bid prices, resulting in contracts worth approximately 21.4 billion KRW.

Three companies were caught engaging in unfair procurement practices such as violations of direct production requirements. Among them, one company supplied products (worth approximately 103 million KRW) that were not directly produced by them as social service personnel uniforms to the demand institution, and two companies supplied solar power generation devices and streetlight poles that did not meet contract specifications, unfairly obtaining approximately 44 million KRW.

The Public Procurement Service decided to recover unfair profits amounting to 150 million KRW from these companies.

A Public Procurement Service official stated, “We will continue to take strict investigations and actively pursue prosecution requests and recovery measures against companies that undermine fair competition order in the public procurement market through unfair procurement practices.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.