SIC sanctions with eight billion pesos the Military Rations Cartel

The Superintendence of Industry and Commerce (SIC) sanctioned with COP$8,381,068,839 (aprox. USD$2.1) Industrias Alimentos y Catering S.A.S, la Huerta de Oriente S.A.S., Iberoamericana de Alimentos y Servicios S.A.S. - Ibeaser and Productora y Distribuidora de Productos Lácteos y Comestibles S.A.S., and ten (10) natural persons, for the cartelization of the ready meals acquisition processes and long life bakery products for the formation of military rations advanced by the Logistics Agency of the Military Forces (ALFM) in the public procurement market of the Bolsa Mercantil de Colombia (BMC) between January 2011 and March 2018.

For the SIC, the agreement resulted in rations having cost overruns of up to 50% of the real value of the food.

The agency also said that these acts were carried out in at least 18 selection processes without interruption, for seven consecutive years, during which time the companies and individuals sanctioned would have been distributed contracts with official budgets amounting to more than 47 billion pesos.

Likewise, the SIC revealed that the companies involved in this cartel agreed beforehand on the distribution and price of the products to be auctioned, and "then gave exact instructions to the stockbrokers that represented them in the auction process, so there was no real competition.