Competition Board Decision regarding implementation of administrative fines for some banks due to not providing the information requested by the Competition Authority

In relation to preliminary investigation dated 17.01.2020 and numbered 20-05/48-M and with its decision dated 02.07.2020 and numbered 20-32/397-179, the Board imposed administrative monetary fines to five undertakings for not providing the information and documents requested by the Competition Authority.

According to the decision, with the first request for information under the scope of the preliminary investigation, all the correspondences of the traders made on Bloomberg and Reuters platforms between 01.01.2018-17.01.2020 were requested, and with the second request for information, all the records of the top 10 traders working at the United States of America and England with the highest TRY quoted transaction volume on Bloomberg and Reuters platforms were requested.

In addition, as expressed throughout the decision, Citibank A.Ş., Goldman Sachs TK Danışmanlık A.Ş., ING Bank A.Ş. and JPMorgan Chase Bank National Association Merkezi Colombus Ohio Istanbul Turkey Branch and Türkiye Garanti Bankası A.Ş. did not provide some of the requested information and documents to the Competition Authority, on the basis that (i) the transfer of the requested data may cause an infringement of GDPR, (ii) the requested information and documents were beyond the authority of the Board, (iii) the requested data was not under their control and that the notice should have been made to the parent company. The Board, on the other hand, did not accept the reasons that are stated above and stated that

• If it is not considered that the examination cannot be performed without the personal data in question, an anonymization with a detailed scope and reasoning which shall not exceed the personal data limits could be considered reasonable,
• The notification that is made to the parent company for being transferred to the subsidiary is valid,
• A statement of the subsidiary solely claiming that it does not have the related information or it does not have access to the related information will not be a reason to prevent implementation of sanctions.

To that end, pursuant to Article 16 of Law No 4054, the Board decided to impose an administrative fine to the undertakings which amounts to by one in thousand of their gross revenues at the end of fiscal year 2019, and also decided that the requested information shall be provided to the Competition Authority until 16.07.2020.

• You may access the full text of the Decision here.