• UOKiK conducted searches at the offices of companies from the IT sector.
• The searches were linked to an investigation as part of which the authority is examining whether there was any unlawful market sharing  between Dell group companies and their distributors.
• Competition-restricting agreements are also the topic of workshops taking place today at the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection.

The searches started on April 8th and lasted six days. 10 employees of the office were involved in the searches. Assisted by the police, they secured electronic data, mainly e-mails exchanged between employees of the companies.

The actions of UOKiK were related to an ongoing investigation as part of which the Office is verifying whether, between Polish companies of the Dell Technologies corporation: Dell and EMC Computer Systems Poland and their business partners any restrictive agreements were concluded. It concerns the sale of Dell and Dell EMC brand products, including IT servers and disk arrays used to store, administer and share processed data.

 - We suspect that market sharing may have occurred. Companies and state institutions which wanted to buy IT equipment could have been assigned to individual vendors. Thus, they may not have been able to obtain a cheaper offer from other Dell distributors, even if they approached them. We also suspect that the manufacturer may have disciplined partners who did not comply with the agreements - says Marek Niechciał, the President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection.

The suspected practices may have infringed both Polish and EU legislation. The authority has therefore informed the European Commission of the matter.

Vertical agreements, i.e. collusion between entrepreneurs operating at different levels of trade (e.g. manufacturer-distributor) is the subject of workshops as part of the Economics of Competition Law series. The meeting is organised by the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection, Positive Competition and the Competition Law Association. The meeting was opened by the President of UOKiK, Marek Niechciał.

Additional information for the media:

UOKiK Press Office
Pl. Powstańców Warszawy 1, 00-950 Warszawa, Poland
Phone +48 695 902 088, +48 22 55 60 246
E-mail: biuroprasowe@uokik.gov.pl
Twitter: @UOKiKgovPL