Criminal offenses

The main criminal offences under the Competition Act are:

  • Bid-rigging
  • Conspiracy
  • False or misleading representations

Penalties
Penalties for breaching provisions of the Competition Act include varying degrees of fines, and in some cases, imprisonment.

Bid-rigging
Bid-rigging occurs when four elements are met:

  • There was a call for tenders.
  • There was an agreement between two or more bidders whereby one or more of them agrees not to submit a bid or when two or more submit bids that were arrived at by an agreement or arrangement.
  • The person calling for tenders was unaware of a previous agreement existing between the bidders.
  • Bids were submitted in response to the call for tenders.

Conspiracy
Conspiracy occurs when two or more competitors conspire, agree or arrange to fix prices, allocate customers or markets or restrict output of a product.

False or misleading representations
Businesses may not knowingly or recklessly make a false or misleading representation to promote a product or business interest to the public. It does not matter if any person was actually deceived or misled by the representation.

Date Updated:
RDP-1713