Funeral firm head says sector's problems go beyond the cartel case
Mārtiņš Bandenieks, head of the funeral companies "Tāle" and "Pauzers", says the cartel uncovered by Latvia's Competition Council is only part of the sector's problems. He also points to procurements and money left outside official records.
Latvia's funeral industry has problems that have gone unresolved for years because of insufficient oversight, and the recently exposed cartel is only one part of them. This is according to Mārtiņš Bandenieks, head of the funeral companies "Tāle" and "Pauzers", in an interview with the news portal Delfi. He says he no longer wants to stay silent about the situation in the sector.
In October the Competition Council (KP), the authority that supervises fair competition in the market, announced that it had found a cartel, meaning a prohibited agreement between companies, in the funeral sector. The companies were fined more than 47 thousand euros in total for the breach of competition law.
Procurements and unrecorded money
In the interview Bandenieks pays particular attention to procurements announced in the funeral field. Behind some bidders' offers he sees more questions than answers. As an example, he cites a case in which one merchant had planned to store the deceased in a shed belonging to a residential house.
The businessman also says that a sizeable share of the money circulating in the funeral sector stays outside official accounting.
The Competition Council's view
The KP has turned to problems in the funeral services market several times before. KP representative Pēteris Pauls Vīksne says the council regularly receives submissions, complaints and other information about possible risks in the sector.
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