Chile: Compensation for consumers affected by ‘paper cartel’ to be ready this year, says company

Paper giants CMPC has said it will make good on its promise to compensate consumers affected by its decade-long collusion with rival paper makers SCA between 2000 and 2011. The company has spent the last year collecting resources and developing the necessary methodology to determine an appropriate way to compensate these consumers, with a study commissioned to British antitrust expert Robin Noble.

“What we want is to have definitively open position, and to have it secured from now to the end of the year. It’s very unlikely that the resources will be delayed until 2017” said former Comptroller General and current CMPC Manager Ramiro Mendoza. The National Service for Consumers (SERMAC), the country’s consumer protection agency, has likewise commissioned and received their own study on the matter.

Both documents should act as a catalyst for the final stage of a long process: defining a method and/or amounts to be paid in compensation. This would make it more than a year after the SERMAC first demanded CMPC and SCA inform them of their planned compensation mechanisms – a request SCA declined.

Damages caused by the paper-makers’ collusion has been calculated at around $510 million dollars, according to the first of two reports created by Bravo Abogados, a law firm, which was included as part of a law suit filed last week against the companies and represented by consumer advocacy group CONADECUS. O these, $445 million dollars would be attributed to CMPC Tissue, while the remaining $65 million would be paid by SCA Chile.

Full Content: Economía y Negocios

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