Home Improvement Shops Charged With Price Fixing

Managers of home improvement stores BYKO, Úlfurinn and Húsasmiðjan have been charged with price fixing, reports RÚV.

In the charge made by the Office of the Special Prosecutor it is claimed that the managers of these stores conspired to fix the prices of wares spanning 100 product groups.

To prove their case the Office of the Special Prosecutor has produced email exchanges as well as dozens of phone calls made between the bosses of these stores.

“We are both bleeding here,” a manager at BYKO told a manager at Húsasmiðjan in a tapped call being used in the case. “We are just killing each other.”

Following this the manager at Húsasmiðjan told the manager of BYKO that he planned to raise prices in his stores in Akureyri and Selfoss.

According to the charge, employees of the stores were told to get on board with price fixing or “kiss their jobs good-bye.”

In all the Special Prosecutor has charged 13 people and has asked for 6 years in prison plus the cost of the legal procedure.