The European Commission stops IFF's feet. As explained by the news agency Europa Press, the European Commission has announced on Monday a fine of almost 16 million euros for the American company International Flavors & Fragrances (IFF). The fragrance company had intentionally deleted, while under investigation, messages sent from a senior company official to another competitor.
In March 2023, the European Commission launched an investigation after conducting surprise inspections at several companies in the perfume and fragrance sector in the European Union to determine whether they were committing illegal anti-competitive practices, such as forming other restrictive business actions.
While this investigation was being carried out, the EU authorities were able to check the mobile phones of some of IFF's employees, and at that time, they detected that a senior official had deleted messages with company information that he had exchanged with a competitor via WhatsApp, just after that person knew that the searches were going to be carried out. This has been considered by the EU executive as obstruction of the investigation.
For this reason, Brussels has decided to impose a fine of 0.3% of its turnover, although it has reduced the penalty by half and the final figure has been 15.9 million euros after recognising that the company has acknowledged the facts and agreed to collaborate in the rest of the investigation process.