Pretoria - A senior manager at Pioneer Foods' bakery division has admitted that he lied about exactly when he became aware of claims that his division was involved in price-fixing.
Sasko general manager Andries Goosen acknowledged under cross-examination that he had known about it earlier than he had wished to admit.
Pioneer is being prosecuted for alleged price-fixing and collusion.
Two other food manufacturers have already paid heavy fines imposed on them by the competition authorities.
Tiger Brands had to pay R98.8m and Foodcorp R45m. Premier Foods escaped prosecution because it informed on the others and cooperated from an early stage.
Pioneer is the only one of those accused of price-fixing that is still digging in its heels.
An e-mail regarding the allegations that Chamber of Millers chief executive Jannie de Villiers sent the company on December 14 2006 was offered in evidence.
Goosen had insisted that he first became aware of the allegations when he received an attorney's letter in this connection on December 20.
David Unterhalter, counsel for the Competition Commission, chronologically detailed the events of December 2006.
He referred to a meeting on December 6 at which the price of bread in the Western Cape was fixed.
The country's foremost bakers, which include Pioneer (Sasko), Albany (Tiger Foods), Blue Ribbon (Premier Foods) and Sunbake (Foodcorp), at that meeting jointly decided to reduce the discount that independent distributors received on a loaf of bread to 75c.
One of these distributors had brought the matter to the attention of the media, the Millers Chamber and the Commission.
After an investigation Premier Foods spilled the beans, and e-mails and details concerning the meetings came to light.
But from the outset Pioneer denied being part of the cartel or guilty of price-fixing.
From testimony before the Competition Tribunal it appears that one of Goosen's key managers, Gerhard Lourens, attended the meeting.
Unterhalter put it to Goosen that he had known this, and that he had been unhappy about it .
Goosen testified that he had not known about the meeting when he received the email from De Villiers.
Shortly after De Villiers had provided details of the allegations in a subsequent message, he had however contacted two of his sales managers.
In a message to them he wrote that they should ensure that their staff did not repeat De Villiers's remarks (about collusion in the market).
"This shows that you knew that there was collusion and you wanted to prevent this being exposed because it could lead to an investigation," said Unterhalter.
Goosen could not remember speaking to Lourens about the claims of price-fixing.
He declared that he did not find this allegation very important because he knew that they would raise their prices at the same time as their competitors did.
The reason was that Hendrik Hollenbach, the national sales manager, had information that their competitors would be increasing prices on December 18.
They decided to raise bread prices between 35c and 45c at the same time.
Unterhalter said the probability that Goosen had known that Lourens had been at the meeting was "overwhelming".
There was also an overwhelming probability that Lourens had told him what had taken place there.
"When the balloon burst on December 14, your gut reaction was to tell people not to speak about it, because you had known."
Goosen denied this summation of events and Unterhalter's interpretation. His cross-examination continues on Wednesday.
- Sake24.com
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