In the last few days, the Superintendence of Companies ( “SoC”) has begun to invite various companies under its surveillance and control to participate, on a voluntary basis, in a diagnostic exercise on the implementation of sustainable practices. This is in accordance with Chapter XV of the Basic Legal Circular of the SoC: “Administrative Recommendations for the Submission of the Sustainability Report”.
The Superintendence of Industry and Commerce, the sole authority for competition protection in Colombia, issued a Guide to Provide Orientation in the Implementation of Competition Compliance Programs. Although the Guide has a doctrinal scope and does not impose obligations, its publication allows the market to understand the vision that the SIC has on the relevance of these types of programs, the benefits of implementing them, and the key elements that they should contain and develop. In this way, the SIC highlights the value of these programs as a mechanism for the prevention and early detection of anticompetitive conduct.
In one of its latest decisions, the Superintendence of Industry and Commerce recognized that the implementation of compliance programs in competition matters might be considered a mitigation factor in the graduation of an eventual sanction. Recently, the SIC has pronounced the importance of these programs, imposing them as behavioral remedies in merger control procedures, as well as in decisions regarding anti-competitive practices. Specifically, in Resolution 22645 of 2022, the SIC imposed remedies to the transaction between two companies, imposing as a behavioral obligation within the companies the implementation of an Antitrust compliance program.
On 24 January 2022, the Colombian President issued Decree 092 of 2022, modifying the structure of the Superintendence of Industry and Commerce and assigned new functions to the different offices of this entity. Within the modifications, particularly noteworthy is the creation of the Compliance Department, which is part of the Deputy of Competition Protection, and the Habeas Data Department, which is part of the Deputy of Personal Data Protection.
The Superintendence of Industry and Commerce (SIC) established the thresholds that will be taken into account to determine whether there is an obligation to undertake a merger control procedure during the year 20221. For this purpose, through Resolution No. 83304 of 22 December 2021, the SIC determined that those economic integrations whose participants, individually or jointly, have total assets or operating income equal to or greater than COP 57,322,387,083.44 (USD 14,398,413.292) must be subject of merger control.
On 12 November 2021, an administrative judge confirmed a sanction of the Superintendence of Industry and Commerce (SIC) on an employee involved in a company dawn raid — Hernando Rodríguez (general manager of Roa Florhuila).