Chile court orders union to reveal details about wellboat deals
A court in Chile has accepted a preliminary ruling filed by shipping company Solvtrans which asks for the trade union Armasur to reveal how it has been working with wellboat companies in the south of the country to prevent free competition.
The move paves the way for a future lawsuit for anti-competitive practices to be heard in Chile's Court for the Defense of Free Competition (TDLC).
The legal action is intended to make the leaders of Armasur - who are also the general managers and administrators of several large shipping companies in southern Chile - show any documents and background registering that they may have coordinated to hinder and impede the access of new players to the salmon industry market.
What is requested of the TDLC does not prevent the National Economic Prosecutor's Office from carrying out investigations in the same market.
Damage
The 18-page document, developed by expert free competition lawyer, Francisco Agüero, claims to show a series of assertions made by Armasur and its associated companies which were intended to publicly discredit Solvtrans Chile in order to damage its image as a shipping company and, eventually, take it out of competition from future biddings.
Agüero said: "The coordination between competing companies to exclude a rival in the market, using a trade union, is one of the most harmful practices against free competition. With the granting of this measure by the TDLC, Armasur ends up being required to exhibit all of the antecedents that a priori would give account of a campaign of harassment and disrepute of a company with an increasing position within the wellboats market."
Víctor Vargas, general manager of Solvtrans Chile, said that Armasur had made "various efforts seeking to exclude other shipping companies in the bidding processes of the companies producing salmon, since Solvtrans Chile has a modern fleet of vessels that are true floating aquariums that move live salmon from the farming sites to the slaughtering plants, under high-quality standards with the most modern technologies existing in this marine area.”
Solvtrans Chile said that some of the practices of Armasur and its competitors were carried out during 2017, while at least three bidding tenders were open for wellboats services for salmon producing companies, which represented almost 30 per cent of the total live salmon transport in the country.
Vargas said: "With this measure that was accepted by the Court, we hope that the illegal and anticompetitive action of Armasur will be evident, showing that the companies grouped in this union do not accept free competition, where new actors come to contribute with better technologies, better conditions for merchant marine workers and also better and more technology to navigate the waters of southern Chile.”
