Competition levies 1.2m-euro fines on private pension market

The Competition Council levied fines of 5.2m RON (1.2m euros) on several managers of mandatory private pension funds (pillar II) that were accused in 2007 of having convened on equally sharing the participants that signed contracts with two funds in the initial joining phase, though the law stipulated they should be distributed randomly.
“It’s an investigation started in December 2007, in the wake of which we concluded that managers agreed to equally divide the participants that signed two contracts. By law, those with multiple signatures had to be randomly distributed through the so-called lottery,” stated Bogdan Chirițoiu, Competition Council chairman.
Approximately 78,000 participants signed contracts to join with two or more funds, according to Chirițoiu.
The fines levied by the Competition account for 2% in the calculation base, set at one tenth of the value of the fund’s assets at the end of last year.
Thus, the biggest fine, of 1.57m RON (370,000 euros) was imposed on ING Pensii, while Allianz Țiriac Pensii, ranking second on the market, got a fine of 1.26m RON (296,000 euros).