Conducting raids on the premises of the eight life insurers under investigation by the Competition Commission for alleged collusion and price-fixing did not mean that all of them were guilty, Fin24 reports Commissioner Tembinkosi Bonakele as saying.
Last week, the commission conducted search-and-seizure operations at the premises of BrightRock Life, Discovery, FMI, Hollard, Momentum, Old Mutual Insure, Professional Provident Society and Sanlam.
Read: Information from ‘an industry player’ prompted Competition Commission’s investigation into life insurers
“Dawn raids are part of the investigation tools. But you have to understand that the fact that somebody is raided [doesn’t mean they are] guilty. It’s like in a criminal case; when they arrest the suspects, the suspects are not guilty. They are just being pursued by the authorities for the purposes of the investigation,” Fin24 quoted Bonakele as telling a media briefing yesterday before the commission’s annual policy conference.
According to the news site, Bonakele said the raids were necessary because cartels deserve no sympathy from society.
“It’s important for the competition authorities to deal with cartels […] It’s criminal to get involved in cartel conduct. There should be as much attention given to cartels as you have in fraud cases because that’s what they are,” he said.
Bonakele said the investigation was at quite an advanced stage.
Fin24 said Bonakele would not disclose whether the commission received a tip-off about the alleged collusion or whether it detected it based on its own observations.
“It’s sufficient to say we have started the investigation indeed, and the investigation is progressing well and quite advanced. How we got the tip-off, I cannot answer because that’s sensitive to the investigation at the moment,” he was quoted as saying.
Bonakele’s nine-year tenure as Competition Commissioner ended yesterday. His resignation was announced in June.
Doris Tshepe, a tax law graduate with 20 years’ experience as an attorney, takes over the head of the competition watchdog today. However, Bonakele said he would be supporting Tshepe in the next three months.
Tshepe served on the advisory panel for amendments to the Competition Act signed into law by President Cyril Ramaphosa in 2019. She is also the former managing director of law firm Cheadle Thompson and a former member of the Judicial Services Commission.
