The firms Aktor and Mochlos to be charged with forming 'cartel' to bid for state contracts

A first-instance court public prosecutor said that charges of fraud damaging the state would be pressed against senior executives of the construction firms Aktor ATE and Mochlos SA.
The two companies allegedly came to an agreement on prices prior to submitting bids in a tender for works to extend the quay at the Thessaloniki Port container terminal, as well as to renovate the Omonia-Monastiraki section of the electric railway in Athens.
Sources said the evidence against the two companies includes letters exchanged by their executives between 2008 and 2012, which show that Mochlos SA agreed to pull out after winning the contracts in both tenders, where it had submitted the lowest bids, so that Aktor might take over. Aktor had submitted the second and third-lowest bids in the two tenders.
The case against the two companies has been assigned to an examining magistrate, who will decide which charges to press against individual suspects.
The investigation was ordered by Greece's corruption prosecutor, who was acting on evidence reported by the Competition Commission indicating "cartel-type collaboration between large construction firms, that for the last 27 years had 'manipulated' public works' tenders." The Competition Commission file included evidence implicating several firms in dozens of projects.
Among the practices that the firms allegedly engaged in were to reach agreement in advance on who will win the contract in each tender, deciding the amount of discounts they would offer and not submitting offers in tenders in exchange for financial reward or the opportunity to participate in the project anyway, as well as jointly completing projects for which they appeared as competitors.