[Anchor]
Companies supplying pork to major supermarkets have been indicted on charges of price-fixing over a period of six years. The scale of the collusion is estimated to have reached 1.2 trillion won.
Reporter Yoo Soo-Hwan has the details.
[Reporter]
The pork display section at a major supermarket.
Consumers continue to reach for pork belly and pork shoulder.
There were times when pork prices became so burdensome that people even used the term "gold-like pork belly" due to soaring costs.
[Lim Sun-ja / Gangseo-gu, Seoul: We use pork belly a lot. It was so expensive back then that people said imported beef was cheaper, so we completely substituted it with beef and ate that.]
Last April, the Fair Trade Commission caught nine distribution companies that supply pork to major supermarkets engaging in collusion by setting lower limits on supply prices, the so-called "floor prices," imposing 3.1 billion won in fines and requesting a prosecution investigation.
According to the prosecution's investigation, they colluded on pork supply prices hundreds of times over a six-year period from 2017 to 2023, driving up market prices by at least over 20%.
Inside a secret Telegram group chat created for the collusion, they shared floor prices by item such as pork belly and pork shoulder, and conversation records were captured where they all answered "yes" in agreement to questions such as, "How about raising prices compared to last week's unit prices?"
When the Fair Trade Commission's investigation began, circumstances were also uncovered where they deleted the secret Telegram chat room while destroying evidence and preparing for the investigation by telling each other, "Just say you don't know much" and "If you deny it, it's over."
[Lee Jung-ho / Chief of Criminal Division 6, Seoul Eastern District Prosecutors' Office: After establishing a communication system for collusion, when a person in charge changed, they handed over the collusive practices to their successor, and when a new company started supplying, they even made that company join the collusion....]
Estimating that the scale of the collusion reached 1.2 trillion won over the past six years, the prosecution indicted six pork distributors and 12 executives and employees on charges of violating the Fair Trade Act.
(Photo: Joo Yong-jin | Video Editing: Choi Hye-ran)
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