​Press Release 22/2016

 

 

In its judgments of October 11 and October 27, 2016, the Court of Appeal of Lisbon decided that the interlocutory appeals of the AdC do not have suspensory effect, but merely a devolution effect.

 

The AdC now confirms its understanding that, without prejudice to the normal reporting of any acts of the AdC, the Competition Law expressly provides that the investigation of a particular infraction is not prejudiced by the litigation that may exist during the procedure, under penalty of paralyzing the ongoing investigations.

 

The Court of Competition, Regulation and Supervision (TCRS) had established the suspensive effect of eight appeals of interlocutory decisions submitted by several banks, which led to the suspension of the proceedings known as the "Banking Proceedings" pending judgment on the various appeals.

 

In total, eleven interlocutory appeals were submitted by the referred to, but the TCRS had only determined the suspensive effect for eight of them.

The proceedings were suspended at the beginning of 2016. The decision of the Lisbon Court of Appeal will allow to lift the suspension of the proceedings and run further investigations.

 

The administrative infraction proceedings opened by the AdC, which investigate an alleged concerted practice of information exchange restricting competition in banking in Portugal, originated searches in the facilities of several banking institutions in March 2013.

 

On May 29, 2015, the Competition Authority adopted a state of objection (charge) against fifteen banking institutions on suspicion of a concerted practice, in the form of exchange of sensitive commercial information, regarding the supply of credit products in retail banking, namely, consumer credit, corporate credit and home loans.

Currently, it is awaiting the res judicata effect of those judgments in order to proceed to the lifting of the suspension of the proceedings.

 

11 november 2016