Care services|Attendo announces in its press release that it considers the proposal for a penalty fee to be unreasonable.
Attend cooperated to restore the deleted data – considers the payment requirement unreasonable.
The Finnish Competition and Consumer Agency (KKV) is proposing a fine of 4.4 million euros to the care service company Attendo, because the company objected to an inspection conducted by the Finnish Competition Authority under the Competition Act. The company’s employee deleted data from his work phone after the inspection began.
The payment is related to the inspections that KKV carried out in January of last year for Attendo and some other companies in the care sector. KKV sought to find out whether the companies had violated the competition law in the market for enhanced service housing for the elderly.
Attend announces in his announcement that he considers the proposal for a penalty fee to be unreasonable and denies that he objected to the inspection by KKV.
“An employee who violated the company’s clear instructions will no longer work at Attendo,” the company says in its press release.
Attendo says that it got the deleted Whatsapp messages and the call log restored during the same day. They were delivered to KKV so that they could be fully used in the inspection.
“We have no reason to oppose inspections, and we have not done so either. As a company, we have not been able to do more. That’s why KKV’s view of the penalty fee is unreasonable,” says the CEO of Attendo Finland Virpi Holmqvist in the bulletin.
Holmqvist states that KKV has investigated Attendo’s operations in the past as well, and that nothing against the law has ever appeared in previous inspections.
“We are confident that this will be the case this time as well,” says Holmqvist.
KKV got the right in 2021 to submit a penalty fee if the business operator violates the rules regarding the inspection procedure. KKV is now using the opportunity for the first time. The penalty fee for a procedural violation can be a maximum of one percent of the company’s turnover.
“Resisting the inspection by deleting data is reprehensible and a serious violation. When, under the Competition Act, a company can be ordered to impose a penalty fee of up to 10% of the turnover for restriction of competition, it must not be attractive for the company to try to avoid a possible penalty fee by destroying data after the inspection has started”, explains the CEO of KKV Timo Mattila in the bulletin.
According to KKV, the penalty fee imposed on Attendo takes into account the fact that Attendo cooperated in restoring the deleted conversations. The final decision on the payment is made in the market court. Attendo announces that it will give a statement to the market court during the summer.
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