Petrol cartel exposed
Nine-MSN - Mar 19 2005
news.ninemsn.com.au
The Federal Court has fined a cartel of eight petrol distribution companies and eight individuals representing them a total of almost $24 million for fixing fuel prices in the central Victorian city of Ballarat.
As the first of the expected appeals against multi-million dollar petrol price fixing fines were announced, the men behind the landmark prosecution welcomed what most believe was an overdue decision.
Trevor Oliver, who owns a two-bowser {two-gasoline pump} garage on the Western Highway just outside Ballarat, spilt the beans on the suppliers when they imposed one price hike too many.
Mr Oliver rang an ABC radio talkback program after his supplier, Leahy Petroleum, told him to put up his prices by 10 cents a litre.
The call sparked an investigation by Australia's peak corporate watchdog, the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission which duly led to the court decision.
"I am pretty relieved really," Mr Oliver said. "It's been a long road and I'm finally glad its all over."
Mr Oliver said he hadn't expected the fines to be as high as they were, suggesting $5 million would have been his best estimate.
"I think the Federal Court is sending out a message to quite a few of the people and the oil industry that we're not going to wear this," he said.
"I used to get phone calls all the time telling me ... even though I was buying my fuel and paying for it, they kept telling me what price to sell the fuel for.
"On the Wednesday before Easter in 1999 they rang up and said I had to put it up at 10 o'clock that morning by 10 cents a litre and I refused to do it.
"How do you stand there and face people and tell them that fuel has gone 10 cents a litre when you haven't received a drop?
"Then they said they were going to cut my supply off. They said well you want to be wary, petrol can be hard to find."
The man who launched the prosecution, ACCC chairman Graeme Samuel, said the practice of price fixing in the petrol industry may never be fully stamped out.
"In rural and regional Australia ... it's more secluded from competition and that, of course, is where the Ballarat case took place," Mr Samuel told ABC radio.
"I don't think this will ever be finished," he said.
"The difficulty with collusion - with secret cartel activity - is that we never know how many of them are out there."
Meanwhile, one of the companies convicted, Apco Service Stations, vowed it would fight the $3 million fine imposed on it.
Company director Peter Anderson, who was also individually fined $200,000, said he was shocked by the "unfair" decision and would file an appeal to the full bench of the Federal Court by April 11.
"I'm stunned, what more can I say?" he told AAP. "I maintain my innocence."
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