The German Federal Cartel Office (Bundeskartellamt) has levied fines totaling roughly €60.3 million against six road maintenance companies for executing a long-running market allocation, price-fixing, and bid-rigging scheme. The collusion focused specifically on thin asphalt overlays using cold-mix asphalt technology (DSK), a common maintenance technique used to repair roads, airports, ports, and vehicle test tracks across Germany.
The penalized entities include AS Asphaltstraßensanierung GmbH, BITUNOVA GmbH, Kutter Spezialstraßenbau GmbH & Co. KG, Possehl Construction GmbH (which absorbed VSI Sanierungs- und Baugesellschaft mbH during the probe), Liesen…alles für den Bau GmbH, and companies under the OAT group umbrella. According to competition authorities, key market players began dividing up public sector clients and contracts nationwide as far back as 2010, with additional firms joining the arrangement over time.
Under their informal agreement, participating providers operated on a policy of “customer protection,” meaning whichever company originally acquired a public client was granted priority rights to future DSK contracts from that client. If a participant ran low on operational capacity, the group would temporarily waive client allocations or form joint ventures to split the work. Federal Cartel Office President Andreas Mundt emphasized that because the cartel primarily targeted public tenders, it directly inflated infrastructure spending funded by federal, state, and municipal governments.
To maintain control over contract awards, representatives met monthly during peak spring and summer seasons, frequently gathering in Kassel to align bids and set minimum pricing floors. Outside of in-person meetings, executives coordinated via phone, email, and encrypted messaging platforms like WhatsApp and Signal. They relied heavily on coded language to hide financial details, disguising price targets as per-meter measurements, hotel rates, event tickets, or quotes for subcontracting services like crack repair.
The illegal collusion officially ended in September 2019 following joint investigative raids conducted by competition officials, the Düsseldorf Public Prosecutor’s Office, and state police. These initial searches spawned further targeted inspections in late 2020 and early 2021. Four of the implicated corporate groups—Possehl/VSI, Bitunova, Kutter, and AS—cooperated with regulators under a leniency program, earning reduced penalties. All involved parties ultimately agreed to an amicable settlement, making the imposed penalty notices legally binding.
