News
Independent power producers guilty of corruption
The Supreme Administrative Court has overruled previous rulings and found nine local independent power producers guilty of engaging in concerted practices in a drawn-out fair trade case.
The ruling comes after the Fair Trade Commission requested the court rule on a case that has been mired in years of litigation. The nine independent power producers involved in the case have been providing electricity to Taiwan Power Company (Taipower) since 1995.
According to the commission, although the power producers agreed in 2007 with Taipower to negotiate pricing on a rolling basis depending on fuel costs, they colluded between 2008 and 2012 to reject talks over pricing adjustments. They were jointly fined NT$6.32 billion by the commission in 2013 for engaging in collusion regarding pricing. The power companies appealed that fine in 2014, and the commission reducedit to around a flat NT$6 billion.However, the FairTrade Commission continued to argue that their private collusion constituted concerted practice and resulted in a negative impact on the market's functioning.
