Justice Cracks Down On Milk Cartel - President Of Fed. Of Industries No.1 Suspect

The investigation into the milk cartel has been closely watched in the Greek press over the last few years amid widespread public perceptions. We all know that the Greek economy is dominated by powerful cartels in various industries and that these groups play with the prices of most of the products we consume. Well the following news story is positive, however, we want to remind our readers that steps have been taken in the past against these so-called "cartels" and they were not very successful because they have the clout, and the power to even bring down governments (just like they did when the administration of Costas Karamanlis attempted to crack down on them).

Greece's Special Corruption Magistrate, Mr. Spiros Georgouleas, apparently summoned executives of six of the country's major dairy firms on criminal charges of forming a "milk cartel." The charges are based on reports from livestock breeders that the companies formed a cartel to push milk prices that are paid to producers.

In all, 10 senior executives, including CEOs and managers, of the dairy firms Mevgal, Fage, Delta, Olympos, Nestle and Agno-Kolios, are accused with criminal extortion and harming suppliers for misdeeds committed in the years 2004-2006. Amongst those noted, is the current president of the Federation of Greek Industries Mr. Daskalopoulos, who at the time was the owner of the Delta dairy company and who apparently held a leading role in "setting" up the cartel!

The accusations include exerting pressure and threatening dairy farmers with exclusion from all markets unless they sold their milk at a very low price. It should be reminded that these same companies then sold their products on the Greek market at astronomical rates. For instance, a litre of milk in Germany was being sold for .60 cents, while in the same period it was being sold for 1.20 on the Greek market.

The dairy farmers claim that they had been forced to sell below a the fixed price ceiling.

In 2007, and under the Costas Karamanlis government, the competition commission fined seven dairy companies a total of 48.3 million Euros for fixing prices paid to dairy producers and among themselves - the result of a more than year-long investigation into anti-competitive practices in the dairy sector.

The biggest fine was against food conglomerate Vivartia SA (- a unit of Marfin Investment Holdings Group SA  - for a total of 21.8 million Euros. Fines on the other companies ranged from a low of 39,996 to 3.0 million Euros.

The other companies included the same Greek dairy companies as noted above: Specifically Mevgal, Fage and Olymbos.

The commission also named super market operators Carrefour SA, Alfa-Beta Vassilopoulos SA, Veropoulos Bros., Atlantic Supermarket SA, Sklavenitis and D. Masoutis SA.

Article in Greek - olympia
Source in English - flex-news-food.com