JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, Oct. 3 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- This week, the European Union found that members of the European paraffin wax industry, including Sasol Wax GmbH, formed a cartel and violated competition law.
'We regret that this has occurred in one of Sasol's subsidiaries and that our due diligence and compliance programmes failed to identify this anti-competitive behaviour, when we acquired the business 13 years ago and thereafter,' said Sasol chief executive, Pat Davies.
'Sasol is a successful business that is built on a foundation of over 30,000 committed and responsible employees. The past actions of but a few former employees has resulted in serious damage to our company's reputation and that affects each one of us,' he said.
Sasol's management, including the Sasol directors of the Schumann-Sasol joint venture, was totally unaware of these activities. When we became aware of them in 2005, they were immediately stopped and Sasol promptly began cooperating with the European Commission's (EC) investigation.
These cartel activities were clearly reprehensible and constituted a flagrant breach of Sasol's policies and values. By their very nature, these activities are secretive and very difficult to detect.
While a fine was expected, we didn't anticipate the magnitude of the fine, particularly in the light of, amongst other factors, not being the legacy owner. We do not yet have the detailed reasoning from the EC and will study it, as soon as it is supplied, to clarify our next steps. As we see things now, it is our intention to appeal.
Sasol wishes to assure our shareholders and the broader public of the serious light in which matters of this nature are viewed.
We have rigorous compliance programmes relating to competition law. Clearly this is an area in which we must continuously improve as our business becomes more complex and competition laws around the world become more stringent. We have recently further intensified our compliance programmes with a particular focus on high risk areas such as joint ventures.
'We are on a journey of transforming the organisation and our values are central to this journey. These values define the manner in which we choose to conduct our business.
