The Competition Council won its first lawsuit against one of the 10 fined banks in the series of ROBOR lawsuits

The Competition Council has prevailed in the first of ten lawsuits filed by banks sanctioned for allegedly coordinating their behavior during the process of setting the ROBOR index. The court rejected CEC Bank’s request to suspend enforcement of the fine until a final ruling on its challenge.

This is the first ruling in a series of lawsuits initiated by the banks involved in setting ROBOR. BRD’s action, the first case registered, was taken under advisement, while the hearing scheduled for November 5 was postponed.

The Competition Council fined ten banks 3.73 billion lei, equivalent to approximately 710 million euros, making it the largest penalty in the institution’s history. The authority claims that exchanges of information and mutual monitoring of quotations affected the mechanism for setting ROBOR and influenced the cost of loans in lei.

The decision was adopted in June and communicated to the banks at the end of September, after the drafting and approval procedures were completed. If the courts reject the requests for suspension, the banks have, under the procedure, one month to pay the fines. The investigation was launched at the end of 2022 and concerned operations on the interbank money market.