Eimskip's claims dismissed
The district court of Reykjavik has dismissed Eimskip´s (Eimskipafélag Íslands hf., Eimskip Íslands ehf. and TVG Zimsen ehf.) claims that the Icelandic Competition Authority (ICA) should end its ongoing investigation on an alleged collusion between Eimskip and Samskip (Samskip Holding BV, Samskip hf., Landflutningar ehf. og Jónar Transport hf.). After the ruling, Eimskip´s attorney announced that the company would consider to appeal the ruling to the Appeals Court. The ruling was subsequently appealed.
The said investigation concerns an alleged collusion in the field of e.g. maritime shipping, freight forwarding and local transport. The investigation is aimed to find out if the alleged conduct is a violation of Article 10 of the Icelandic Competition law Act and Article 53 of the EEA agreement.
ICA´s investigation began with a dawn raid on 10 September 2013. A further dawn raid was conducted in June 2014. An earlier investigation into certain aspects of on-land transportation was also merged with the said investigation.
The investigation has been conducted continuously and is well underway, given its considerable scope. During this process, the parties to the investigation have had an opportunity to give their comments to ICA´s preliminary assessment, explained in a statement of objections. The parties will be given further opportunities to that end in the near future.
Based on charges put forward by ICA, the conduct of certain key employees is also under investigation by the District Attorney. According to the Icelandic Competition law Act, it is ICA´s responsibility to assess whether the part of the case which is subject to the criminal liability of a natural person should be reported to the police. In such cases, the law stipulates a cooperation between ICA and the police.
In the case Eimskip put forward to the district court, it was demanded that ICA should return all data seized in the dawn raid conducted at Eimskip's business premises and all copies to be deleted and destroyed. To clarify, all data that was seized from the premises was copied and then returned. It is not the case that ICA has denied Eimskip access to any of their data. The claim before the District Court on the deletion of copies is yet to be dealt with.