The focus of the seminar will be on a special kind of cartels – bid rigging cartels. Characteristics of bid rigging cartels will be examined, their treatment as a criminal offence in many jurisdictions and also ways of detecting bid rigging cartels. We will use OECD materials on bid rigging and also on screens for cartel detection. The interplay between the detection of bid rigging cartels and of leniency programmes will be discussed. As public procurement is often the victim of bid rigging we will also focus on ways to alert public procurement officials to illegal cartel activities and on designing tenders and we will compare different approaches to competition advocacy and to co-operation between competition authorities and other government agencies in this area. Participants will share their experience with experts from OECD countries in lectures and case studies. Practical exercises on hypothetical cases involving all the participants will complement the presentations and will serve as an opportunity to apply the learnings of the seminar.
