United We Stand, Divided We Fall - The Role of Inter-Agency Cooperation in Enforcement of Bid Rigging Conspiracies

Abstract

Public procurement plays an important role in economy of every country. The vast amounts of money awarded in public contracts, however, make public procurement extremely vulnerable to collusion among competitors and corruption of public officials. Although it is recognized that effective enforcement of these offences requires tight cooperation between competition agencies and other law enforcement authorities, there is still a lot of potential for improvement in many jurisdictions. The objective of this paper is to suggest key features of this cooperation which would facilitate effective catching of both colluding competitors and corrupt public officials involved in bid rigging schemes.