Public Procurement Service Cracks Down on 15 Unfair Procurement Companies Including Bid Rigging

The Public Procurement Service announced on the 7th that it has identified 15 companies involved in unfair procurement practices such as bid rigging and maintaining preferential prices, and has taken strict measures including requests for prosecution and decisions to recover unjust profits.

Among the companies caught, three were referred to the Fair Trade Commission on suspicion of collusion in public institution bids. These companies are accused of agreeing on successful bidders, accomplices, and bid amounts from January 2014 to July 2021, and participating in the purchase bid for distribution panels ordered by Korea Electric Power Corporation, concluding contracts worth approximately 47.1 billion KRW.

Twelve companies were subject to decisions to recover unjust profits. These companies were investigated for unfair procurement practices such as violations of preferential price maintenance and direct production standards across nine product categories including video surveillance devices, steel gratings, and natural stone slabs.

For example, four companies including Company A violated the obligation to maintain preferential prices by supplying goods such as natural stone slabs to the market at prices lower than the contract unit price of comprehensive shopping malls. The Public Procurement Service plans to recover unjust profits amounting to approximately 1.1 billion KRW from these companies.

Eight companies including Company B are suspected of delivering other companies’ finished products or violating specifications during contract execution for multiple supplier contract items such as video surveillance devices, steel gratings, and pedestrian mats. The amount of unjust profits to be recovered from these companies is 130 million KRW.

Lim Gi-geun, Administrator of the Public Procurement Service, stated, “We will apply a zero-tolerance principle to unfair procurement practices and take strict measures. The public procurement market is the foundation that operates according to economic principles, and the Public Procurement Service will do its utmost to eradicate unfair procurement practices to establish fair order in the procurement market.”

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