An MP Notified the Competition Council about an Alleged Cartel Agreement on the Advertising Market

MP Radu Marian, ‘ACUM’ Electoral Bloc, announced on his Facebook page that he submitted a number of requests to the Competition Council (CC) to investigate the anti-competitive practices. A request related to an alleged cartel agreement on the Moldovan advertising market.

Thus, the MP asked the authority to launch an investigation of anti-competitive practices in the media advertising field, and to announce its results and any sanctions applied.
 
‘Today we submitted a number of requests to investigate the anti-competitive practices in three key areas: media, cereal and dairy product markets. Competition Council, we’re watching you!’ wrote Radu Marian.
 
MP Radu Marian, ‘ACUM’ Electoral Bloc, announced on his Facebook page that he submitted a number of requests to the Competition Council (CC) to investigate the anti-competitive practices. A request related to an alleged cartel agreement on the Moldovan advertising market.
 
The MP explained that the CC notification built on ‘media information revealing anti-competitive acts committed by the advertising agency Casa Media Plus SRL, which would control 70% of the total revenue of the local advertising market’.
 
‘In addition, the local media told of a possible cartel agreement between Casa Media and Exclusive Media Group, which undermines the free competition. In this respect, a number of TV stations lodged a complaint to the Competition Council in January 2018, without receiving any answer’, the request also mentioned.

Note that four TV stations – PRO TV Chisinau, RTR-Moldova, Jurnal TV and TV 8 – lodged a complaint to the Competition Council (CC) on 19 January 2018, in which they accused Casa Media and Exclusive Sales House of concluding a cartel agreement.

Since then, the complaint is still investigated by CC.

According to the January complaint of the four TV stations, Casa Media and Exclusive Sales House, that own 75% of the advertising market, share, starting with this year, the customers’ budgets in-between them in a ration from 80% to 20%, offering additional discounts of up to 50% to those who conclude exclusive contracts with them.

Media market issues drew the attention of foreign embassies and were also noticed by NGOs. Previously, the representatives of the two advertising sales houses denied the existence of cartel agreements between them.