Bank: Competition files complaint

The Competition Authority will file a complaint with the Conference of Judges of the Constitutional Court regarding the decision of this body not to consider the appeals filed by it and the Public Prosecutor's Office in the banking cartel case.

In a response to Lusa, an official source from the Competition Authority (AdC) said that the entity “presented the complaint against the individual decision of the Constitutional Court not to hear the appeals filed by itself and the Public Prosecutor's Office, for the conference of the Constitutional Court”.

According to the same source, the regulator filed this complaint “with the aim of activating the last procedural mechanism available to ensure constitutional compliance with the decision of the Lisbon Court of Appeal (TRL) and, thus, guarantee the effective application of justice and the protection of the public interest in the repression of anti-competitive practices”.

The Competition Authority also highlights that “no court has declared the inexistence of the infringement attributed to the banks by the AdC (and confirmed by the TCRS and the CJEU) and therefore there is no question of any acquittal of the anti-competitive practice”.

“With the latest decision, the Lisbon Court of Appeal did not rule out the practice of the infraction by the banks, it simply understood that the administrative offence liability had been extinguished due to prescription” , he concludes.

The Constitutional Court (TC) rejected the appeals filed by the Competition and Public Prosecutor's Office to try to stop the statute of limitations in the banking cartel case, which provided for fines of 225 million euros to 11 banks.

The AdC and the MP wanted the TC to pronounce itself on whether or not the decision of the Lisbon Court of Appeal to count towards the limitation period the two-year period in which the case was awaiting a decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union was unconstitutional, as well as the interpretation of which law was applicable to the case.

However, the judge-advisor of the Constitutional Court “criticizes the questions raised, saying that it is only his responsibility to 'scrutinize the constitutionality of legal norms' and not to “indict the merit or goodness of the appealed decisions”.

Additionally, it considers that the MP lacks legitimacy for raising questions of unconstitutionality that it had not raised until now and for questioning aspects that, even if they were considered unconstitutional, would not alter the decision of the Court of Appeal from which it appeals.

The Competition Authority and the Public Prosecutor's Office wanted to see 11 national banks fined a total of 225 million euros for breaches of competition law related to the exchange of sensitive information on credits between 2002 and 2013: CGD (82 million euros), BCP (60 million), Santander (35.65 million), BPI (30 million), Banco Montepio (13 million euros), BBVA (2.5 million), BES (700 thousand), BIC (500 thousand), Crédito Agrícola (350 thousand), UCI (150 thousand), with Barclays also being convicted, but without having to pay a fine for having been the whistleblower.

Banif did not appeal the initial decision, as it had only been sentenced to a fine of 1,000 euros.