'It's all just a storm in a teacup' - WBHO chairman

Mike Wylie, chairman of construction giant WBHO, commenting this week on the allegations of collusion among major construction companies, said: "It wasn't so bad."

Speaking after his company's AGM on Wednesday, Wylie, who last year admitted he had been involved in the backroom conspiracies, said the once-endemic collusion was no more serious than "going through a red robot".

It is likely that the Competition Commission would have used a different analogy .

Competition authorities demanded that WBHO pay R311-million last year, the biggest fine imposed on any of the 21 construction companies identified as having colluded during a five-year period.

Collectively, the companies paid administrative penalties of R1.4-billion.

Wylie said that it was in the spirit of cooperation, and in order to put the affair behind it, that WBHO agreed to pay the fine.

"The fine is significant and is more than just a slap on the wrist," the company said. "Of more than 2000 tenders during those years, only '22 potential transgressions' were identified - just 1% of the tenders."

Now, Wylie said, WBHO had paid its dues. Shareholders need not worry, he said, because "this is a thing of the past".

This is the mantra that most of the construction chiefs have been repeating for months - but the authorities seem to believe quite differently.

Hours after WBHO 's AGM , the commission referred a case relating to the tenders for six World Cup stadiums to the Competition Tribunal.

Mava Scott, spokesman for the Competition Commission, said it had "evidence" to prove that at the end of 2006 Murray & Roberts, WBHO, Group Five, Stefanutti Stocks and Basil Read discussed how the stadium tenders should be divvied up between them,.

The commission's investigations led it to believe that cover prices for the tenders had been arranged and companies aimed to obtain a 17.5% profit margin on the projects.

A cover price is a price a company bids knowing that it will not be accepted. This ensures that the agreed company gets the tender.

Scott said the commission wanted 10% of the revenue of the subsidiaries of companies that benefited from the backroom deals.

Murray & Roberts - which won leniency for snitching on the other companies, and for continuing to assist the commission - had identified two meetings at which it said stadium tenders had been rigged.

Aveng, which was not named in the commission's statement, tacitly admitted to corruption relating to this charge by paying the fine as part of a fast-track settlement process.

Wylie denied that WBHO had made profit margins of 17.5% but when asked what they were said he "would rather not go into detail".

Investors did not seem too concerned about the new twist in the collusion case - WBHO's share price rose to R121.93 from R120.90 on the day.

WBHO, Group Five Construction, Stefanutti Stocks and Basil Read refused to pay the fines levied in respect of the World Cup stadiums in the fast-track settlement, saying their discussions did not amount to collusion.

The commission began investigating collusion after complaints emerged about the bidding process.

In 2011, it launched a "fast-track" settlement option and invited companies to admit corruption in the five-year non-prescription period.

Asked why these claims arose if the collusion allegations were not true, Wylie said he did not know: "One of their guys must have thought [the discussion] was collusive."

Ed Jardim, spokesman for Murray & Roberts, said the commission had gagged the company as a condition of the leniency agreement and he could not comment.

Wylie said "the true picture will come out" in the tribunal. "We didn't collude on the stadiums," he said, but he admitted that "there was lots of other cover pricing".