Tesco fined £6.5 million for part in price fixing scandal
27 Feb 2013
Supermarket giant Tesco has been fined £6.5 million for its part in a dairy price fixing scandal, ending an investigation, which ran over a decade, according to The Guardian newspaper.
The penalty is much less than the initial £10 million that was imposed on it after it won a partial victory against the Office of Fair Trading (OFT).
According to the newspaper, in December, the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) decided to overturn over half of the findings by the OFT, that the retailer had fixed the prices of cheese in collusion with other retailers and suppliers.
According to the CAT, there was ''insufficient evidence'' that Tesco was involved in a concerted effort to rig cheese prices in 2003.
However, the appeal tribunal upheld the OFT's conclusion that found the supermarket communicating its pricing to rival retailers through a supplier three times in 2002, The Guardian said.
The latest hearing brings to a close a long-running OFT investigation that had seen supermarkets and dairy processors pay £39 million collectively in fines. According to the estimates of the OFT, the collusion led to shoppers paying 2p more for a litre of milk and 2p more for 100g of cheese. The scandal had cost consumers an estimated £270 million.
