The Latvian Competition Council (Konkurences padome) has imposed fines totaling €47,124.66 on eight funeral service providers for participating in a bid-rigging cartel across 13 public procurement procedures.

The investigation revealed that key market participants—including SIA “ABSocial”, SIA “Rīgas memoriālais centrs”, SIA “FLAMMAX”, and SIA “KREMATORIJU APVIENĪBA”—coordinated their actions to allocate public contracts between 2020 and 2025. Organizers of the affected tenders included the Riga Eastern Clinical University Hospital, state social care centers, the State Police, and the Riga Municipality, with a total estimated contract value of approximately €2 million.

According to the regulator, the cartel members engaged in systematic anti-competitive practices, including cover bidding, bid withdrawals, the exchange of commercially sensitive pricing information, and submitting offers from shared IP addresses. A single natural person representing “KREMATORIJU APVIENĪBA” and former market player “Nacionālais Apbedīšanas Dienests” acted as the primary orchestrator, filing bids directly on behalf of nominal competitors through the Electronic Procurement System.

Individual fines ranged from €700 for secondary cover bidders up to €22,748.05 for “KREMATORIJU APVIENĪBA”. The regulator noted that despite previous enforcement actions and market studies dating back to 2015, the funeral services sector in Latvia continues to suffer from systemic anti-competitive risks due to an incomplete national regulatory framework.