Unilegion, a Munich-based company that organizes class actions, has initiated legal proceedings for around 3,200 farmers adversely affected by a cartel of pesticide wholesalers. These wholesalers engaged in illegal activities for many years, artificially inflating pesticide prices until a whistleblower revealed the scheme.

In December 2019 and January 2020, the German Federal Cartel Office, known as the Bundeskartellamt, imposed fines totaling 154.6 million euros on seven pesticide wholesalers. The investigations revealed that these wholesalers colluded on pricing, discounts, and net pesticide prices from 1998 until March 2015. Ulm-based Beiselen exposed the cartel to the Bundeskartellamt and was thus exempt from a fine.

Initially, the cartel members convened multiple times yearly to agree on gross list prices, but their collaborations shifted primarily to written or verbal agreements over the years. The four leading wholesalers, consisting of two cooperatives and two privately owned firms, typically coordinated pricing calculations first.

Subsequent discussions occurred within groups of cooperatives and non-cooperatives. Their agreed-upon pricing schemes and final gross price lists were distributed among all companies every spring and autumn.

The Bundeskartellamt’s dawn raid on 3 March 2015 effectively shut down these anti-competitive practices just before the 2015 spring season.

Having meticulously reviewed over 600,000 pesticide invoices and related documents to quantify the damages, Unilegion is pursuing more than 200 million euros in damages for the affected farmers.

Taylor Wessing Germany is managing the lawsuit, which is funded by Augusta.