The worst cartel

The word ”cartel” in itself has automatically a negative connotation, for good reasons. People associate this word with one of the worst wrongdoings in business, which annuls the competition on the merits, able to maximise efficiency, and so it affects consumers.

Perhaps the best known cartels in the world are not trading in a legal business but with a product which is prohibited almost anywhere in the world: the Medellin cartel and, more recently, the Mexican drugs cartels.

What makes drugs cartels particularly evil and dangerous is that they do not only fix production quotas and raise prices, in collusion, but also because people die as a result of their activities.

Drug cartels are not alone in producing such results, unfortunately. There are cartels in legit businesses which go so far as affecting people’s lives, not just their money.

One such cartel is that sanctioned in December 2021 by the Romanian Competition Council, with a very high amount – 71 million Euro – in the market for immunoglobulins, medicines used in several very difficult diseases: SIDA, cancer, auto-immune diseases. Those in need of these medicines are patients in very difficult situations and their life is already on the brink, so they are very dependent on immunoglobulins.

The Romanian Competition Council found that 5 major international producers of plasma protein (the raw material for immunoglobulins) therapies, gathered in the Association of the Producers of Plasma Protein Therapies (PPTA), organised a boycott, consisting in collectively and in agreement stopping supplies to patients in Romania, in order to force authorities in my country to pay higher prices and reduce or eliminate a claw-back tax applicable to all medicines sold in Romania.

What is particularly striking at this carte is the cynicism shown by the leaders of PPTA and of its members, who squeezed supply of medicines which were essential to patients in Romania, while being aware of the consequences of their actions, including the loss of human lives. They knew what was going to happen but this did not even slowed them down. It is absolutely shocking and I don’t think there is anything worst than aiming for higher profits while inducing the death of innocent people.

In the words of an insider of the industry, PPTA behaved rather as a terrorist organisation, making civil casualties without any concern, in the name of its allegedly higher but selfish goals. Absolutely shocking. Absolutely inhuman.

In an unusual attitude the otherwise sober Romanian competition authority felt the need to express its frustration in the press release issued in February 2022, when it announced the huge fines: ”The lack of access to immunoglobulins, as essential medicines for many serious illnesses, endangered the live of patients and forced the authorities to take crisis measures to provide the necessary medicines to patients by triggering the European Civil Protection Mechanism, this implicitly indicating the magnitude of the situation on the national market.” This statement is just the tip of an iceberg and below the surface, deep in the text of the sanctioning decision, we find the horrific description of arrogance, greed and cruelty which resulted not only in the cartel achieving eventually its purpose – eventually the prices paid by Romania increased and the claw-back tax for immunoglobulins has been cancelled – but also in the death of many patients who were deprived for a long time of their must needed treatment.

In fact, the lack of immunoglobulins continues in Romania, as seems to be the cartel itself. Romanian patients are still in desperate need of their treatments, while PPTA and its members seem not only not to abide by the law, but to punish those who supported the investigation of the Romanian competition authority and pressure Romania to cancel the fines, which they dispute in courts.