They generated payment grilles, now they have to pay themselves. UOKiK imposed 3.3 million penalties

The President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection on 11 entrepreneurs who generated payment gridlocks imposed over PLN 3.3 million. He also issued a decision on 450 thousand. PLN penalty for late answers to questions in the course of the proceedings.

Penalties were imposed on companies from the automotive industries, packaging, wind, construction, machine, cosmetics, food and pharmaceutical energy. Med & More, over 614.3 thousand, got the highest penalty of nearly PLN 1.1 million. Special cars were applied to WISS, and 457.7 thous. – Cetes Cosmetics Poland. They also got a penalty: Contimax (approx. PLN 341 thousand), Liugg Dressta Machinery (PLN 298.3 thousand), Superior Industries Production Poland (PLN 287.6 thousand), Velvet Care (PLN 181.5 thousand), Marelli Aftermarket Poland (PLN 126.8 thousand), Amcor Specialty Cartons Polska (124.8 PLN thousand), Vestas-Poland (PLN 82.6 thousand) and Robyg Construction (PLN 62.2 thousand).

UOKiK informed on Wednesday that six out of eleven fined entrepreneurs did not question the office's findings and paid penalties, which made them reduced by 20 percent. He stated that from the beginning of the year he also had 128 soft speeches to entrepreneurs on payment gridlocks. In July alone there were 22 such speeches. “Soft occurrences mobilize entrepreneurs to change internships and to improve payment discipline relative to contractors without the need to initiate formal proceedings,” the office explained.

The President of the Office, the President of the Office, Tomasz Chróstny, emphasized that UOKiK is the first and second instance in matters of payment gridlocks, as the office also considers the dismissal of companies. “In both cases, this requires a huge amount of work. Only as part of recently conducted cases we analyzed almost 320,000 invoices issued by over 9,000 suppliers,” said Chróstny.

The antitrust office explained that when imposing the penalties he took into account not only the value of expired payments and the length of delays, which determine the maximum amount of penalty calculated on the basis of a statutory formula, but also individual in each of the cases soothing and aggravating circumstances. “In matters of three punished companies, the importance of the violation, actions taken to minimize the risk of delays in payments, limiting their scale and thus stop further violations,” he noted. An important circumstance for UOKiK was, for example, the company's cooperation with the office in the course of the proceedings. In addition, in two cases, entrepreneurs showed that they themselves were a victim of payment congestion, which is why their penalties were reduced.

A penalty of 456.3 thousand PLN was also imposed on the company Neptun from Lublin for “late response to the calls directed to it in the course of the proceedings.” As the office explained, the company gave incomplete answers and after the set time, and this hindered the proceedings. One of the calls was not to respond for 107 days, although the law obliges entrepreneurs to answer at the request of the President of UOKiK.

UOKiK reminds that the current law allows the office to suspect that a given company is excessive delaying with payments. Such a notification must have four elements: an entrepreneur's indication, a description of the facts that is the basis for the notification, the probability that the delay actually takes place, and identifying data identifying the applicant. (PAP)

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