CADE’s Tribunal, at the August 8 trial session, decided to convict Brazilian company Rodrimar due to port charges. Commissioners João Paulo Resende and Cristine Alkmin issued losing votes.
The majority of the Tribunal held that the Container Delivery and Segregation Services Charges – SSE, in Portuguese (also known as THC2, in English), are abusive and impair free competition, considering the final customer, which would be subject to prices imposed by the vertically dominant economic agents. CADE then imposed a fine of R$ 972,000 and determined that the company could no longer charge the other players operating with container warehouse.
The losing votes, in turn, were to close the case, in favor of Rodrimar. Commissioner Cristiane, in her circumstantiated opinion, understood that the fee is neither abusive nor discriminatory, since it is established under Resolution 2,389/2012 of Antaq and is charged to all players in the market. She also emphasized that Antaq is the regulator body responsible for the port sector, and that should also be responsible for evaluating such procedure.
Commissioner João Paulo also voted for the closing, but with a different justification: the set of evidence was not sufficient for the conviction, since there was no concrete evidence in the records that proved the competitive loss derived from the fee.
