The submission cartel - When are price agreements on the award of major projects time-barred?

Article in NZWiSt 7/2018 by Dr Jan Kappel and Florian Junkers

The consequences of a cartel violation - especially in the case of agreements regarding the award of major projects - can be economically immense for the companies concerned. Therefore, the possible cartel violation rightly assumes enormous importance in the compliance work of companies.

If the company wants to defend itself against the cartel allegation, the defence of the statute of limitations can be an interesting element. Thus, a statute-barred offence cannot be relied upon to justify a fine.

In the legal assessment of the statute of limitations for criminal prosecution, the decisive factor is which connecting act is to be used as the basis for a corporate fine (Section 298 of the Criminal Code or Section 81 of the ARC) and when the relevant unlawful act was committed or "terminated". The approaches taken in this regard lead to considerably different statutes of limitation, the interval between which can be years or even decades in individual cases.

The article was published in: NZWiSt 2018, 374.

Available online at: https://beck-online.beck.de/Dokument?vpath=bibdata%2Fzeits%2Fnzwist%2F2018%2Fcont%2Fnzwist.2018.274.1.htm&anchor=Y-300-Z-NZWIST-B-2018-S-274-N-1