German Federal Cartel Office raids the offices of chocolate, candy makers

One candy maker says increasing cocoa and nut costs led to a price increase.

BERLIN (AP) — The German Federal Cartel Office raided the offices of seven candy and chocolate makers amid allegations of a conspiracy to fix prices.

Silke Kaul, a spokeswoman for the agency said the companies — including the German offices of Mars, Kraft Foods Inc., Nestle SA, and Ritter — had agreed at the beginning of the year to raise prices.

The Kraft Foods office in Germany confirmed it had been searched.

“We are cooperating with the Cartel Office. We are contributing our part to a speedy investigation,” said Kraft spokeswoman Silke Troesch.

A series of raids took place on Thursday.

Nestle headquarters in Vevey, Switzerland was not familiar with the allegations. “What, precisely, their contention is, I don’t know,” said Francois-Xavier Perroud, spokesman for Nestle.

Troesch attributed the rise in chocolate prices to the massive increase — between 30 percent and 100 percent — in the price of raw materials in the past year.

The Cartel Office said it suspected that the companies had conspired with one another to raise their prices even higher than the increase in the price of raw materials, such as cocoa and nuts, would have demanded.

“We made the decision on the basis of intensive market analysis,” Kaul said.

If the Cartel Office finds evidence of collaboration, the companies face possible fines that could amount to 10 percent of their annual income.

The investigation may also broaden, according to Kaul.

“If we can see that there are effects in other countries, then we could pass the investigation to the EU commission for competition,” said Kaul.

Late last year, Canadian regulators opened an investigation of Nestle, Cadbury, Hershey and others to determine if the companies had collaborated in the nation’s multibillion-dollar business of chocolate bars.

Canada’s Competition Bureau served search warrants on several major bar makers, requiring them to turn over reams of documents on pricing arrangements.