£129m fines for construction firms

Link to the article: Channel 4 News

By Channel 4 News

Some of the country's biggest construction firms are fined millions of pounds for illegally rigging contracts across England at the taxpayers' expense. Faisal Islam reports.

The Office of Fair Trading found firms guilty of anti-competitive collusion during the bidding process and warned the practice had been "endemic" throughout the industry. But the companies involved will not be barred from future tenders for public sector work. And the fines, which follow a five-year investigation, are far lower than had been expected.

The OFT found 4,000 instances of bid-rigging involving more than 1,000 companies but only focused on the cases where the evidence was strongest.

Most of the cases came in the form of so-called "cover pricing", where one or more bidders arrange for competitors to put in high bids so they will not win the contract, but will increase the appearance of competition.