Competition Authority Begins Investigation of Serbia's Telecom

The Competition Authority has launched an investigation into MTS, the subsidiary of Serbia's Telekom in Kosovo. This investigation has been launched under suspicion that the company has carried out stock trading in the current market by gaining control over other companies for which the legal obligation for reporting the Law on Protection of Competition is met, reports Online Economy.

The task of the institution's director-general, Selajdin Beqa, says of Online Economics a conclusion to the start of the procedure against MTS D.O.O., which operates in the Kosovo market with internet and cable services offering.

“At the end of 2022, we have started under increased monitoring of the telecommunication market as you are familiar with the media and your extensive opinion we have opened some investigations from this sector, with which we are now in the procedure, and it is worth highlighting the case of the investigative procedure against the MTS company that we are already in the last steps of the procedure where the party has been notified of the preliminary facts outlined in the procedure, now we have more data consisting of which the company will be invited to the hearings of the Competition Commission, and we will be faced with the last steps of the procedure, which the AKP groups are now under investigation and the Commission will now make a decision to the ECCHOC.

“ ... We had opened an investigation into the MTS company regarding the failure to make the announcement of concentrations in the Competition Authority, as stated by the law, the company had failed to submit to the authority transactions it had bought with several companies in different Kosovo settlements by buying them without presenting them to authority modifications and on this basis we have opened the investigation, now I have made the preliminary announcement, we are checking the facts, and we go according to the legal procedure at the hearing with the company, and now the commission says its address to<1x>

Beqa has indicated that in reporting facts, MTS has bought at least four regional companies, in mostly Serb-inhabited settlements.

“In the north and a total of 11 municipalities around the north, the municipality of Shtrpce, the other Gracanica, where there are Serb community settlements. It's amazing, but that's how it is”, says Beqa, as she also pointed to the time when these investigations began.

In late autumn of last year, the Authority repeatedly conducted monitoring of specific markets. The telecommunication market, respectively, seems to have a high degree of concentration, and at the base of that time we have started monitoring that came up with doubts based on the fact that we can start an investigative procedure and without what happened, it is due to which we have initially opened the investigation into MTS company and we have also opened investigations, we have had complaints in fact, we have continued the procedure under the official order”, Beqa said, saying the complaints were mostly coming from small companies. / EO/