June 14, 2018
Japan Fair Trade Commission
The Japan Fair Trade Commission (the JFTC) today issued a cease and desist order to Fujita Corporation. In this case, Fujita violated theArticle 19 (Item14[Interference with a Competitor's Transactions]) of the Antimonopoly Act (AMA).
Fujita interfered with other participants in bidding for the engineering works ordered by Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (the MAFF) from making deals with the MAFF, by means of bidding with corrected technical proposal and information about the bids of the works. The employee of Fujita who was a former official of the MAFF got the confidential information from officials in charge of the works prior to the bids.
The JFTC also issued a caution to 10 construction firms as their conduct could lead to the violation of prohibition of the Article 3 (Unreasonable Restraint of Trade) of the AMA.
Their employees who were former officials of the MAFF confirmed one another whether they joined the bids of the works.
Moreover, the JFTC requested the MAFF, in order to prevent recurrence of the conducts mentioned above,
1) to take appropriate measures to prevent the MAFF officials in charge of the works from taking actions similar to those described above
2) to provide officials with training program on compliance of AMA if necessary before they retire
＊Every announcement is tentative translation.
Please refer to the original text written in Japanese for more
details.
