Australian competition regulator to pursue company fines worth hundreds of millions

CANBERRA, March 26 (Xinhua) -- The head of Australia's business watchdog has called for large companies who break the law to face harsher penalties.

An Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report released on Monday revealed that the average fine for companies engaging in uncompetitive behavior in Australia was 25.4 million Australian dollars (19.6 million U.S. dollars).

Comparatively, the report found that the average fine in similar developed nations was 320.4 million AUD (247 million U.S. dollars); more than 12 times the average in Australia.

Rod Sims, chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, said that Australia's system of fines was clearly failing.

"We see continuing breaches of the act by companies that have been caught before," Sims told the Guardian Australia on Monday.

"We see that there is really no effect on share prices.

The OECD report compared Australia's system to Germany, South Korea, Japan, the United States, Britain, and the European Union.

It found that those countries calculated penalties based on the size of the company while Australia "does not follow a structured methodology."

Under Australian law, companies can be fined up to 10 percent of their total turnover but Sims said the maximum penalty had never been enforced.

He said that the ACCC would pursue penalties in the hundreds of millions of dollars, closer to those imposed internationally.

"It's up to the courts to set penalties but we have a role in our submissions to the court and we need to change what we do," Sims said.

"We'll have to be a little less likely to settle cases unless we get appropriate penalties." Enditem