Cases before the National Courts and Competition Authorities

In 1992, the European Commission imposed heavy fines for bid rigging on a number of associations in the Dutch construction sector, representing around 4200 Dutch construction companies. The decision was upheld by the Court of First Instance.
In November 2001, whistle-blower Ad Bos claimed that agreements on the prices quoted in tenders were as widespread a practice as ever, producing evidence of duplicate bookkeeping covering the period from 1988 to 1998 and showing the virtual amounts his company owed to competitors (and were owed) under the bid-rigging scheme. A parliamentary board of enquiry set up to investigate described the Dutch construction sector as "infected". The Dutch Competition Authority (NMa) carried out a large-scale and wide-ranging investigation of the building sector. In 2003 it rendered sicx decisions. Twenty-six companies were found to have coordinated their actions in public tenders and were fined for infringements of the Dutch Competition Act (DCA). The evidence put forward by Ad Bos played a significant role in the largest of these cases.