A FORMER director of a car company has been given a 15-month suspended prison sentence and fined €160,000 for price-fixing, in breach of competition law.
Mr Justice Liam McKechnie told the Central Criminal Court in Dublin that it was “with great reluctance” he suspended the sentence and warned that custodial prison sentences would be handed down in future for such offences.
James Bursey (64) was director of Bursey Peppard Motors Limited, which traded at St Agnes’s Road, Crumlin Cross, Dublin, until October 2008. Bursey and the company pleaded guilty in March to four charges of entering into and implementing agreements with other Leinster car dealers to fix prices of Citroën vehicles.
Bursey pleaded guilty to authorising the company, as director, to enter into and to implement an agreement with other undertakings to prevent, restrict and distort competition by directly or indirectly fixing prices of Citroën cars in Leinster between July 8th, 1996 and June 30th, 2002. He also pleaded guilty to two similar charges on behalf of the company.
Mr Justice McKechnie sentenced Bursey to 15 months imprisonment suspended for five years for the two offences to which he pleaded guilty and also fined him a total of €80,000. He also fined the company €80,000 for its offences.
Thomas Fitzpatrick, an officer with the Competition Authority, told the court earlier this week that Bursey was a member of the Citroën Dealers Association which had its first meeting in April 1995 and operated until 2004.
Members of the association agreed to implement a scheme in which prices were set by the organisation in relation to maximum discounts from the recommended retail price, delivery charges, accessory prices, trade-in values and export prices. These agreed minimum prices were printed up and circulated to members by the association secretary.
The association set monetary penalties for breaches of the agreement and hired “secret shoppers” to go into dealerships and check that members were sticking to the agreement. Bursey attended its initial meeting in April 1995 and was appointed treasurer, a post he held for two years. He was president in 2003 and 2004.
Mr Fitzpatrick told the court that the Competition Authority examined the minutes of 57 association meetings and that Bursey was a “regular attender” and a “vocal contributor”.
Bursey Peppard Ltd had a turnover of nearly €6.2 million for nine months in 2006 and nearly €3.2 million in 2007 and 2008. The company was experiencing difficulty and ceased trading in October 2008, with losses of over €500,000.