A CO Kildare company director was given a nine-month suspended prison sentence and was fined a total of €100,000 for fixing car prices as a member of a cartel by a judge at the Central Criminal Court in Dublin yesterday.
Mr Justice Liam McKechnie warned custodial prison sentences would be handed down in future for such offences.
Patrick Duffy (52) is a co-director of Duffy Motors Limited which trades as PG Duffy and Sons, Naas Road, Newbridge, Co Kildare. He and the company pleaded guilty last January to entering into and implementing agreements with other Leinster car dealers to fix prices of Citroen vehicles.
Mr Duffy, who lives across the road from his business premises, pleaded guilty to two counts of authorising the firm to enter into and to implement an agreement with other undertakings to prevent, restrict and distort competition by directly or indirectly fixing prices of Citroen cars, within the province of Leinster on dates between June 24th, 1997, and June 18th, 2002, contrary to section 4 of the 1991 Act and section 2 of the 1996 Act.
He also pleaded guilty to two similar charges on behalf of the company.
The judge sentenced Duffy to nine months imprisonment suspended for five years for the two offences to which he pleaded guilty and also fined him a total of €50,000. The judge also fined the company €50,000 for its offences.
Last January Thomas Fitzpatrick, an officer with the Competition Authority, told Denis Vaughan Buckley SC, prosecuting, that Mr Duffy was a member of the Citroen Dealers’ Association (CDA) which had its first meeting in April 1995 and operated in the Leinster region until 2004.
Members of the CDA agreed to implement a scheme in which prices were set by the organisation in relation to maximum discounts from the recommended retail price, delivery charges, accessory prices, trade-in values and export prices.
A “pocket card” containing the CDA’s agreed prices was developed which was half the size of an A4 sheet of paper and was laminated. It became popular because it easily fitted into a jacket pocket.
The CDA set monetary penalties for breaches of the agreement and hired “secret shoppers” to go into dealerships and check that members were sticking to the agreement.
Fines set by the CDA ranged from £500 to £1,270 but Mr Fitzpatrick was unable to say if anyone had ever paid such a fine. Two market research firms were employed by the CDA to get quotes from members and report back.
The judge heard that two members of the CDA were given qualified immunity by the Director of Public Prosecutions and would have given evidence of what happened at CDA meetings had this case gone to trial.
Mr Duffy was interviewed by Competition Authority officers on March 3rd, 2004, and confirmed that he was a member of the CDA and had served as its treasurer from 2000 to 2003. He had only ever missed a few meetings and had been responsible, as treasurer, for paying the fees of the “secret shoppers” employed to monitor adherence to the agreement.
The judge heard that two other members of the CDA had been prosecuted in the Circuit Criminal Court in Dundalk and Trim for entering into agreements to fix prices. They received three-month suspended jail terms and fines of €12,000 and €20,000.
This case is the second to be dealt with by the Central Criminal Court. A previous case was dealt with in Cork and concerned Ford cars. Under the Competition Act of 2002 all such cases are now heard at the Central Criminal Court and maximum penalties are five years in jail, and/or a maximum fine of €4 million.