Finland Times

The European Commission has fined Infineon, Philips and Samsung more than 138 million euros (181 million U.S. dollars) for their coordinated market behaviour for smart card chips to form a cartel, an official statement said on Wednesday. 

"The companies colluded through bilateral contacts that took place in the period between September 2003 and September 2005," the statement said.

The German company Infineon was fined 82.78 million euros, the Dutch firm Philips 20.14 million euros and the South Korean Samsung 35.11 million euros, with Samsung receiving a reduction of 30 percent of its fine for cooperating with the investigation.

The Japanese company Renesas (at the time a joint venture of Hitachi and Mitshubishi) was also involved in the case, but the statement said Renesas avoided the fine of more than 51 million euros for revealing the existence of the cartel to the European Commission.

"The companies involved in the cartel colluded through a network of bilateral contacts in order to determine their respective responses to customers' requests to lower prices," the Commission said.

The Commission added, "They discussed and exchanged sensitive commercial information on pricing, customers, contract negotiations, production capacity or capacity utilization and their future market conduct." 

Smart card chips are used in mobile telephone SIM cards, bank cards, identity cards and passports, pay TV cards, and various other applications. 

The commission said any person or firm affected by anti-competitive behavior as described in this case may bring the matter before the courts of the Member States and seek damages. 

The Commission started the investigation in 2008 with unannounced inspections. After the settlement discussions were discontinued in 2012, the Commission issued a Statement of Objections in 2013, giving the companies the opportunity to comment and to be heard before taking the decision.

The Commission said more information will be available once confidentiality issues have been dealt with.