Gasoline price-fixing charged in Quebec

For the first time in history, Canada’s Competition Bureau has charged 11 companies — three of which have pleaded guilty — and 13 people with fixing gasoline prices at the pump in Quebec.

Bureau Commissioner Sheridan Scott said in a statement June 12 she believes gasoline stations in three markets collaborated to fix prices from 2005 through 2007.

Valero Energy-owned Ultramar, one of the leading marketers and refiners of petroleum products in Canada, was among the companies that pleaded guilty and has received the largest fine to date of C$1.85 million ($1.8 million).

Ultramar said in a statement that the bureau’s probe showed no members of its management were involved in the scheme or were even aware of what was happening. One of Ultramar’s regional sales representatives, Jacques Ouellet, was fined C$50,000 by the bureau and fired by Ultramar.

A spokesman for Ultramar said the company has a “strict code of conduct … so to have one of our employees involved in something like that is a shock.”

The companies that registered guilty pleas in Quebec Superior Court were Les Petroles Thierren and Distributions Petrolieres Therrien, operating under the banner Petro-T. Both were fined C$179,000.

Companies operating under the Esso, Shell, Petro-Canada, Irving, Olco and Sonverco names pleaded not guilty.

Scott told a news conference in Montreal that the fines were among the stiffest “issued for a domestic cartel.”

She said the companies phoned each other in advance to determine a price and a time to change that price.

Competition Bureau agents intercepted 200,000 calls over a two-year period, using wiretaps of homes, service stations and offices, said John Pecman, the bureau’s acting senior deputy commissioner in the criminal matters branch.

Scott said the price-fixing is thought to have involved 21 of 22 gas stations in Thetford Mines, 23 of 24 stations in Victoriaville and 56 of 65 stations in Sherbrooke.

—Gary Park