The Competition Authority “defined the amount of the sanction taking into account the seriousness of the obstruction offense, which obstructs the exercise of its mission of repressing anti-competitive practices”.
The manager of the Loste charcuterie group, also vice-president of the sector lobby, said he was in the United Kingdom while he was in Paris… The Competition Authority announced on Wednesday that it would impose a sanction on the company of 900,000 euros for obstructing his investigations. The Competition Authority “defined the amount of the sanction taking into account the seriousness of the obstruction offense, which obstructs the exercise of its mission of repressing anti-competitive practices”she said in a press release.
In November 2023, the French competition watchdog carried out searches, called “visit and seizure operations” (OVS), in the premises of the Loste group and those of the French Federation of Charcuterie Companies (FICT). The newspaper Le Canard Enchaîné reported at the time that the Authority suspected several major brands of colluding on the prices of their nitrite-free cold meats.
According to the chronology established by the Authority, the boss of the Loste group had slipped away from his Paris office for an hour and a half, with his phone and tablet, without introducing himself to the people responsible for OVS within his company. Called by an official of the FICT, at the request of investigators, he declared that he was traveling in the United Kingdom and could not come to the premises of this organization responsible for defending the interests of the sector, of which he is vice-president. As for the legal director of the Loste group, she explained that she had not seen him in the office, before withdrawing.
“The behavior in question necessarily led to a risk of loss or alteration of evidence”underlines the Authority in its decision. This text anonymizes the accused. However, the vice-president of the FICT Antoine d’Espous presents himself on LinkedIn as boss of the Loste group, whose parent company is domiciled in Luxembourg, noted AFP. This company manufactures cold meats (hams, sausages) in several factories in France. The Authority does not communicate the group’s overall turnover.
This is not the first time that the Competition Authority has probed the practices of charcuterie manufacturers. In 2020, a “ham cartel” was convicted for price cartels between 2010 and 2013. The initial sanction, of 93 million euros, was reduced to some 39 million euros on appeal.