Legal Analysis in the Implementation of Per Se Illegal and Rule of Reason Approaches in Cooking Oil Cartel

Abstract

Cartels are classified as serious violations of competition law because they affect price volatility, which in turn affects consumers' purchasing power. Law no 5 of 1999 regulates about monopolistic practices and unfair business competition which then obliged all business actors to implement a fair business activity. But still there are some people who don’t complying the regulation like the occurrence of cases of alleged violation of Article 5 and Article 19 letter c of Law Number 5 Year 1999 which involved 27 palm oil companies producing cooking oil with the discovery of 1.1 million litters of cooking oil stockpiled in a storage warehouse in Deli Serdang. With problem formulation, namely, why the KPPU stated all the reported cooking oil producers are not proven to have committed a cartel and how to implement the per se illegal and rule or reason approaches in this case. This research uses normative method with 3 approaches that is statute approach, case approach, and conceptual approach. This study concludes that KPPU decided that the reported parties were not proven to have violated the law since there are elements of the article that are not fulfilled. For the implementation of approach in article 5 uses a per se illegal approach, which means that the action is deemed to have violated fair business competition without the need for further analysis. Meanwhile, Article 19c which uses the rule of reason approach requires further evaluation of actions that were violated by business actors, consideration, and determination of whether these actions impede competition by showing the consequences for other business actors or the general economy.