The European Commission said Tuesday it would sue four elevator companies for damages that the EU headquarters suffered as a customer of a price fixing cartel.
The EU's executive said it would seek compensation from Germany's ThyssenKrupp AG, Finland's Kone Corp., Switzerland's Schindler and United Technologies Corp.'s unit Otis Elevator Co. of the United States for what it said was collusion to raise the cost of elevators in EU buildings in Belgium and Luxembourg.
It put no price tag on the damages it suffered, saying the contracts were too complicated to calculate a figure at this stage. It said the case it will take to a Belgian commercial court would help identify the total amount overpaid.
"As a result of the anticompetitive behavior of these companies, the EU institutions, and so the European taxpayer, have suffered financially by paying over the odds for the installation and maintenance of lifts and escalators," said Siim Kallas, the EU's top administration official.
EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said EU regulators also wanted to encourage other victims of cartels to seek damages in the national courts. "In this case, we are leading by example," she said.
Although cartels are punished by paying fines to EU or national regulators, few customers take cases to win compensation _ something the European Commission wants to change, saying private legal action would act as an extra deterrent against potential price-fixing
EU spokeswoman Valerie Rampi said the Commission was also thinking of bringing another damages case against Belgian removal companies that regulators fined in March for fixing the price of shipping furniture for diplomats and European Union officials moving to and from Brussels.
EU regulators said they were worried that the elevator cartel could continue to hurt building owners for many years because elevator companies usually carry out maintenance on the equipment they installed. Cartels push up average prices by between 20 percent and 30 percent, they said.
Kone refused to comment on the case while a Schindler spokesman said the company was waiting for the EU to specify the level of damages and prove it to the court.
In February 2007, the EU's antitrust unit fined the elevator companies a total of 992 million (US$1.3 billion) for running a cartel from 1995 to 2004 to rig bids for public contracts, fix prices, allocate projects to each other, share markets and swap crucial business information.
ThyssenKrupp was given the largest fine, over 479 million (US$630 million), because the company was labeled a "repeat offender" by EU regulators. Otis was fined 225 million (US$295.8 million), Schindler 144 million (US$189.3 million), Kone 142 million (US$187 million), and Mitsubishi's Dutch subsidiary was fined 1.8 million (US$2.37 million).
EU officials said the companies clearly knew what they were doing because they tried to hide their traces, even using prepaid mobile phone cards to avoid tracking.
The cartel decided in advance who would win contracts for hospitals, railway stations, shopping centers and other buildings across Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands so they could keep their market share steady.
They deliberately made fake bids at a higher price by companies not supposed to win government tenders, the EU said.
Associated Press Writers Malin Rising in Stockholm and Frank Jordans in Geneva contributed to this story.
