Spotlight on procedural compliance

Scrutiny of responses to information requests intensifies across Europe

Information requests are a vital tool for authorities attempting to uncover antitrust infringements. Failure to fully and accurately comply with these requests will compromise and potentially lengthen and increase the costs of investigations. Authorities are therefore likely to actively look out for and investigate potential misdemeanors and ensure sanctions have a deterrent effect.

2025 saw two significant cases where companies were penalized for failing to provide full responses to information requests. Both breaches came to light following dawn raids.

In September 2025, the European Commission (EC)  imposed an unprecedented fine on Eurofield for providing incomplete information during an antitrust investigation in the synthetic turf sector. The authority was alerted to the possible incompleteness of Eurofield’s reply to an informal request for information after comparing it with documents collected during dawn raids carried out as part of the investigation. Eurofield and Unanime Sport (Eurofield’s ultimate parent at the time of the infringement) ultimately agreed to cooperate and submitted the missing documents after the EC informed them that it was investigating the suspected procedural breach. The EC settled on a fine amounting to 0.3% (of a possible 1%) of the parties’ combined total turnover, which it considered to be “both proportionate and deterrent.” This was reduced by 30% to around USD194,000 as a reward for the companies’ cooperation.

On announcing the penalty, EC competition commissioner Teresa Ribera noted that the EC “will not hesitate to pursue similar cases in the future.”

Summer 2025 saw another notable enforcement case when the Italian antitrust authority (AGCM) fined Ryanair USD1.47 million for failing to provide complete and correct information during its abuse of dominance probe. Specifically, the AGCM found the airline had failed to provide internal strategic documents (i.e., business plans and other relevant presentations) that were in its possession. Ryanair had claimed that it did not prepare business plans for Italy or other countries and that strategic decisions were taken informally and not documented. The fine was the authority’s highest-ever penalty for such an infringement and Ryanair has announced that it will appeal the decision.

It will be interesting to see whether the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) follows suit in pursuing similar breaches, in accordance with its new powers under the UK’s Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act (in force since January 1, 2025) to impose fines of up to 1% of annual turnover for non-compliance with investigations (a sharp rise from a previous maximum fine of GBP30,000).

Beyond Europe: regulators worldwide toughen up on procedural breaches

Other national regulators have also clamped down on procedural breaches.

In March 2025, the Turkish antitrust authority imposed a monetary fine of 0.1% of its gross turnover on Novonesis A/S and its subsidiaries due to the provision of incomplete, incorrect, and misleading information. In addition, it imposed additional daily fines of 0.05% of its gross turnover for every day after the deadline date that it failed to provide the missing information.

In July 2025, China’s Shangdong AMR fined Weifang Zhongyuan Pharmaceuticals in excess of USD5.3m for abusing its dominant position in the supply of an active pharmaceutical ingredient. The investigation also uncovered that four pharmaceutical companies had obstructed the investigation by providing false information, denying profit-sharing, and providing inconsistent statements. Each of the four companies was fined (separately to the abuse of dominance investigation) approximately USD28,000.

Significantly, in January 2026, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and a coalition of states sued Amazon and asked a federal judge to impose spoliation sanctions for Amazon’s alleged failure to retain relevant business records. It claims that Amazon has been “deliberately deleting unedited “raw” notes from business meetings” in contravention of its document preservation obligations.

Enforcement has also caught individuals.

In April 2025, in the U.S., a military contractor pleaded guilty to destroying evidence relating to the bid-rigging of U.S. Army operation and maintenance contracts in South Korea. He deleted text messages after receiving a litigation hold notice from his employer requiring him not to destroy or delete communications and later covered up the deletion.

The U.S. Department of Justice noted that it “will not hesitate to prosecute individuals who unlawfully impede our investigations by destroying or covering up evidence.”

Rising penalties for dawn raid obstruction

Over recent years, we have seen numerous fines for non-compliance with dawn raids. 2025 was no exception.

In Hong Kong, 2025 saw the first criminal prosecution and conviction for non-compliance with investigation powers. An employee at a commercial cleaning company was sentenced to two months in prison for destroying and concealing documents during a dawn raid conducted by Hong Kong’s Competition Commission.

In Hungary, Volvo Hungária Kereskedelmi was fined a record amount of USD619,000 for an apparent delay in providing encryption keys to data obtained during a dawn raid, while fines were also levied in Türkiye (retailer BIM fined USD36m for deleting data) and Poland (automotive wholesale and retail sale company Landcar fined for failing to provide information).

In addition, in China, a pharmaceutical company and individual employees were fined for reportedly forcibly entering a meeting room being used by the authorities and violently seizing a laptop that had been prepared for inspection.

See our section on strengthening investigative powers signifies a continued appetite for enforcement where we discuss the volume and location of antitrust inspections carried out in 2025.