Romania's Competition Council wins first court battles as banks try to block record ROBOR manipulation fines

The record fine

Romania's Competition Council announced on Sunday, 7 June, that it had sanctioned ten banks with a combined fine of 3.73 billion lei (710 million euros) for coordinating their behaviour in setting the ROBOR index, the benchmark used to calculate interest on loans to Romanian households and businesses. The penalty is the largest in the institution's history. The ten banks have three months to submit a compliance plan, according to Council president Bogdan Chirițoiu.

There is no difference between what I call a classic cartel and this exchange of information between banks. The result is the same.

The mechanism

Chirițoiu described the conduct as falling short of an explicit agreement to fix a specific rate, but argued that the transparency of the fixing process made such an agreement unnecessary. Banks could see each other's quotes and align accordingly. The investigation, which began in 2022, found numerous contacts among staff at the participating banks and exchanges about methodology and rate movements.

There were many contacts between the staff of the banks involved in ROBOR fixing, and the system as it is applied allows the viewing of quotations.

Banks go to court

Two of the sanctioned banks, identified by judicial sources as Raiffeisen Bank and BCR, filed separate actions at the Sector 1 District Court and the Bucharest Court of Appeal seeking to suspend hearings, deliberations, and the drafting of the decision. The Competition Council said one bank also sought access to protected documents without following legal procedures. Both courts rejected the requests as inadmissible. The last hearing took place on Monday morning, 9 June.

Never in the history of the Competition Council has something like this happened: the banks tried every avenue, whether at the district court or the Court of Appeal, to block the completion of the investigation.

Pressure and timing

Chirițoiu said the banks mounted a public campaign to influence the decision before the Council had even held hearings. He described the effort as intentional confusion designed to put pressure on the institution. The timing was sensitive: the mandates of the Competition Council's leadership expire in mid-July. If the drafting of the decision had been suspended, there was a risk that no one would be available to sign it before the judicial recess, potentially allowing the banks to challenge the fine as unsigned and legally invalid.

What comes next

The Council aims to complete the reasoned decision within one month so that the fines can be signed by the current leadership. The banks have five days to appeal the court rulings rejecting their suspension requests. All ten lenders have announced they will contest the fines. Chirițoiu noted that the reasoned decision has not yet been published or sent to the banks, and that the report has been forwarded to the European Commission for validation. He also pointed to an EU directive that allows parties who suffered harm to bring civil actions for damages, with a presumption that prices in cartel cases are 20 percent higher, though no such action has ever been brought in Romania.