The National Court annuls the fines of 88 million to 11 dairy industries
MadridUpdated:
A ruling from the sixth section of the courtroom of the National Court has been nullified by formal defects the fines of 88 million imposed by the National Commission of the Competition Market (CNMC) to 11 dairy industries for information exchange and the market distribution of raw cow's milk for the year 2013.
The fine, one of the largest amounts imposed by Competition, affected Danone, the most sanctioned with 23.2 million euros, Corporación Alimentaria Peñasanta (21.8 million), Lactalis Iberia group (11.6 million), Nestlé Spain (10.6 million) Puleva Food (10.2 million). million) and Paschal Quality (8.5 million euros). Senoble Ibérica (929,644 euros), Central Lechera Asturiana (698,477 euros), the Dairy Industries Guild of Catalonia (200,000 euros), the Association of Dairy Companies of Galicia (100,000 euros) and Central Lechera de Galicia (53,310 euros) were also sanctioned.
The room partially estimates the resources of the dairy companies and, without entering into the merits of the case, it orders the procedure to be rolled back to the moment immediately before April 24, 2014, the date on which the CNMC reopened the instruction of the file to modify and broaden the charges that had already been established. The Chamber has notified 10 judgments, one for each appeal raised by the dairy companies.
Prior to these judgments, one of the companies affected, Nestlé, he resorted first before the courtroom of the National Court of Appeals and then before the Supreme Court the subsequent modification of the specifications for the facts made by the Competition Directorate. Both the National Court and the Supreme Court (in a ruling dated July 24) concluded that the resolution of April 24, 2014 of the Directorate of Competition ordering the reopening of the investigation phase, based on the power to correct material errors , was null because that correction not only implied a legal valuation but also implied a procedural irregularity, when reopening the phase of instruction.
With this criterion set by the Supreme Court, the sixth section now analyzes in its judgments whether it should also apply to the entities that have been sanctioned in the same disciplinary proceeding and that did not appeal the resolution of April 24, 2014. The court concludes that the criterion must affect all and not only Nestlé, as a recurring entity in those proceedings "and this even if they were not affected by the aforementioned temporary modification of the imputation".
The magistrates argue that the participants in this single proceeding are affected by any of the procedural vicissitudes that may occur and in the specific case analyzed, the reopening of the investigation phase, although it implied a greater temporary imputation for some of the expedited ones, "The certain thing is that this decision supposed that a new sheet of concretion of facts is dictated that is the one that the quoted sentences has annulled".
Therefore, the Court annuls the sanctioning resolutions because it was issued in a proceeding whose actions derive from an act of processing of the Competition Directorate (the one of April 24, 2014) that has been declared null by the judicial organs: «A formal defect due to irregularity in the single procedure can not exist only for some».
By recalling the actions of the CNMC to the moment before the resolution of April 24, 2014, the room explains that the procedure may be continued through its own channels and that It may end well with a sanctioning resolution, or with a resolution of the file, "According to the assessment of the evidence and the arguments of the parties made by the CNMC with full freedom of discretion".
