Award-wining architecture firm Ashton Raggatt McDougall and its former boss have agreed to pay a combined $975,000 in penalties for attempting to rig bids on a $250 million building project at Charles Darwin University.
The High Court has thrown out laws that banned unions and other third parties from spending more than $20,000 on political campaigns ahead of a New South Wales state election in March.
A former executive of BlueScope Steel has pleaded guilty to obstructing an Australian Competition and Consumer Commission price fixing investigation, in the first criminal charges ever brought against an individual in relation to an ACCC probe.
The ACCC has been given the green light to use witness statements prepared during its criminal cartel investigation of BlueScope Steel in the civil penalty proceedings launched by the regulator, but a fight with the steel giant over the admissibility of the evidence still looms.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has won court approval to bring new claims against BlueScope Steel for allegedly seeking to induce competitor OneSteel to engage in cartel conduct.
The High Court has quashed a search warrant obtained by the Australian Federal Police and used to raid a News Corp journalist’s home, but did not go so far as to order the return or destruction of documents obtained in the raid.
Tasmanian state-owned ports company TasPorts has admitted to charging additional fees to the owner of a local port, but has denied the ACCC’s allegations that these actions constituted a misuse of market power designed to stymie competition.
Bail conditions have been set for a former BlueScope Steel executive charged with obstructing an Australian Competition and Consumer Commission criminal cartel probe into the steel company, the first criminal charges ever brought against an individual in relation to an ACCC investigation.
The competition regulator has been probing alleged cartel conduct by steel giant Bluescope for a number of years, counsel for the company told a court Friday as it sought transcripts of the watchdog’s compulsory interviews of witnesses and asked for five months to put on a defence.