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AmBev’s true face revealed
On July 22,
Brazil’s Administrative Bureau of Economic Defense (CADE)
found the transnational corporation AmBEV guilty of “unfair
competition” and of breaking the country’s antitrust law,
and sentenced it to pay a fine of 176 million dollars.
The international news service EFE reported that
Brazil's antitrust regulator CADE had “imposed a
record fine of 352 million reais (US$ 176 million) on
beverage giant AmBev for anti-competitive practices.
The Cade
agency found that AmBev, brewer of Skol,
Brahma and Antarctica beers, used discounts,
premiums and exclusivity agreements to dissuade retailers
from selling competing brands”.
According to CADE’s spokesperson, Fernando
Magalhaes Furlan, “the biggest impact of AmBev's
anti-competitive practices was on consumers, who ‘will not
have either the variety or prices they want’.”
Magalhaes
also said that the company “always operated at the limit of
legality.”
CADE’s
investigation was prompted by a complaint from
Schincariol, one of AmBev’s competitors, which
claimed that it had lost 20 percent of its market share as a
result of the Belgium-Brazilian corporation’s monopolistic
practices.
CADE
has also ordered AmBev to cancel its retailer
“loyalty programs,” imposing a fine of 27,000 dollars for
every day it continues with such programs.
Consulted by SIREL, Siderlei Silva de Olivera,
president of Brazil’s National Confederation of Food Workers
(CONTAC), said that this a “brawl between the ‘big
dogs.’ It’s a situation that does not affect workers, but it
does allow us to have an idea of AmBev’s profits, as
the fine is equal to two percent of the company’s turnover
in 2003, the year before the complaint was filed.”
“Moreover -Siderlei continued-, this confirms once
again the type of ‘militarized’ methodology applied by this
transnational corporation, which has no qualms about
breaking the law to boost its profits. This is the true face
of AmBev. If it has no problem treating its
‘colleagues’ -its peers- like this, it’s not hard to imagine
what it’s capable of doing to its workers.”
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