The Fair Trade Commission has detected 20 companies that colluded in the bidding process for system furniture for over 10 years and imposed a penalty surcharge of 18.3 billion won.
On the 13th, the Fair Trade Commission noted that it imposed a total of 18.344 billion won on 20 companies, including HANSSEM, Dongsungsa, SpaceMax, Yeongil Industries, and Jamart, for violating the Fair Trade Act, and decided to refer four companies to the prosecution.
The penalty surcharge amounts for each company are as follows: Dongsungsa (4.469 billion won), SpaceMax (3.822 billion won), Yeongil Industries (3.324 billion won), Jamart (1.593 billion won), and HANSSEM (1.579 billion won).
According to the Fair Trade Commission, these companies committed collusion in 190 bidding cases for system furniture ordered by 16 construction companies from February 2012 to November 2022, a period of about 10 years.
System furniture is created by combining wood shelves with aluminum columns and is mainly installed in APT. dress rooms and pantries. Unlike typical built-in furniture (such as wardrobes and sinks), bidding is conducted separately.
Furniture companies held meetings or contacted each other by phone before participating in the bidding to determine the winning bidder and agree on bid prices. The winning company shared profits with participating companies by distributing project quantity or paying cash. It was investigated that they used methods such as drawing lots or random selection to determine the company that would win future bids.
According to the Fair Trade Commission's investigation, the average winning rate for the 190 bidding cases where collusion occurred was nearly 100%. The related sales amount totaled 332.4 billion won, effectively meaning prices were set without competition.
This measure is the third sanction case related to collusion in bids for APT. indoor construction, following last year's 'collusion in built-in special furniture bidding' and 'collusion in system bathroom bidding.'
A Fair Trade Commission official explained, "This is the detection of collusion that has been practiced for over 10 years in the system furniture bidding market, and it is significant in that it corrected the collusion in APT. related construction, which acts as a factor in raising housing prices."