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Thirteen years after one of the most emblematic collusion cases in the country, the Sernac announced this morning that it reached an agreement with two of the three pharmacies to financially repair those affected by this practice, which resulted in the agreed increase of 206 drugs.
Specifically, the service agreed with Salco Brand Y green Cross compensate with the sum of $ 22,000 to a group of 53,000 Chileans, the most affected and vulnerable with this surcharge.
“This group that is called diffuse are those who did not have a damage with a surcharge because they could not acquire these drugs precisely because of the high cost they had and that generates social damage to consumers,” said the head of the agency, Lucas del Villar .
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Sernac said that the agreement will imply a total outlay for the two pharmacy chains of $ 1,387 million. With this money, compensation will be paid to consumers, and it also considers an amount that will go to a social good.
“An important precedent is set because this ruling that not only accepted the lawsuit filed and Sernac’s economic reports to account for the premium paid, but also received compensation to consumers who could not buy products for the premium, marking a milestone history of consumer rights in our country, ”said Del Villar.
The service detailed in a statement that the payment will be made once the court’s resolution that approves the settlement is enforceable, which should occur in the coming weeks.
The consumer payment process will be carried out through BancoEstado, an entity with experience in this type of process, and which also has a wide network throughout the country, facilitating access to all beneficiaries.
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Consumers will receive full compensation, without a discount for operations, since the total cost of the payment process will be financed by the pharmacies that sign the agreement.
The money will be paid to the beneficiaries through electronic transfers to the RUT Accounts of those who currently have this financial product.
Farmacias Ahumada, the third company involved in the case, was not part of this settlement, which was criticized by the president of Conadecus, Hernán Calderón.
“We would have liked to close this chapter completely and for the Fasa company to have adhered to and accepted the ruling issued by the civil court, because clearly it is part of what has to compensate all Chilean consumers. We regret that the company has not had the responsibility to assume its bad practices, “he said.
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Almost in parallel to the Sernac conference, Farmacias Ahumada issued a public statement explaining that it did not adhere to the agreement because it assigned the same legal status for the three companies, “ignoring the radically different role that Farmacias Ahumada has played throughout the judicial process since the events that gave rise to the offense were discovered ”.
“We cannot accept that the cost of this negotiation is to ignore all the remedial actions that the company carried out immediately after having closed a conciliation agreement with the FNE, which undoubtedly reflects from the beginning a position totally opposite to that of our competition ”, said the company.
It should be remembered that on December 31, 2012, in a unanimous decision, the Court for the Defense of Free Competition accepted the request presented in December 2008 by the National Economic Prosecutor’s Office against Farmacias Ahumada, Farmacias Cruz Verde and Salcobrand. These last two were each condemned to pay 20,000 Annual Tax Units, approximately US $ 19 million.
On that occasion, the FNE said that the sentence was “conclusive” in that the increase suffered by certain drugs in the period between December 2007 and March 2008 was the result of the coordinated action of the three pharmacy chains.
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“The total amount of the fines established in the judgment – the maximum possible to impose on each of the sanctioned companies according to the applicable law -, exceeds the total of the fines imposed by the TDLC and the Hon. Supreme Court since 2004, the year the TDLC was created ”, said the FNE in 2012.
In 2013, Sernac filed a class action lawsuit against these three chains, with the purpose of compensating consumers who were harmed by the collusion that occurred between December 2007 and March 2008.
The Service filed this collective legal action after the Supreme Court ratified the decision of the Tribunal for the Defense of Free Competition.
Then, in December last year, the 10th Civil Court of Santiago sentenced the Cruz Verde, Salcobrand and Farmacias Ahumada pharmacies to pay US $ 2.6 million ($ 2,021,878,270) for compensation for consumers affected by collusion. .
