A COMPANY and its director will be sentenced next month by the Central Criminal Court for fixing car prices as a member of a cartel, in breach of the Competition Acts.
Mr Justice Liam McKechnie asked lawyers to prepare written submissions on the sentencing principles applicable to the case and listed it for sentence on February 23rd, 2009.
Patrick Duffy (52) is a co- director of Duffy Motors Limited which trades as PG Duffy and Sons at Naas Road, Newbridge, Co Kildare. Mr Duffy and the company pleaded guilty to entering into and implementing agreements with other Leinster car dealers to fix prices of Citroen vehicles.
Mr Duffy, who lives across the road from his business premises, pleaded guilty to two counts of, as a director of a company, authorising it to enter into and to implement an agreement with other undertakings to prevent, restrict and distort competition by directly or indirectly fixing prices of Citroen cars, within the province of Leinster on dates between June 24th, 1997 and June 18th, 2002. He also pleaded guilty to two similar charges on behalf of the company. Thomas Fitzpatrick, an officer with the Competition Authority, told Denis Vaughan Buckley SC, prosecuting, that Mr Duffy was a member of the Citroen Dealers’ Association (CDA) which had its first meeting in April 1995 and operated in the Leinster region until 2004. Members of the CDA agreed to implement a scheme in which prices were set by the organisation in relation to maximum discounts from the recommended retail price, delivery charges, accessory prices, trade-in values and export prices.
These agreed minimum prices were printed up and circulated to members by the secretary of the CDA. A “pocket card” containing the CDA’s agreed prices was developed which easily fitted into a jacket pocket. The CDA set monetary penalties for breaches of the agreement and hired “secret shoppers” to go into dealerships and check that members were sticking to the agreement.
Mr Justice McKechnie heard that two other members of the CDA had been prosecuted in the Circuit Criminal Courts in Dundalk and Trim for fixing prices. They received three-month suspended jail terms and fines of €12,000 and €20,000.
