Article 254 Bis Federal Criminal Code

There shall be sanctioned with imprisonment of from five to ten years and with from one thousand to ten thousand days of fine, anyone who enters into, orders or executes contracts, agreements, arrangements or combinations between economic agents competitors among themselves, whose object or effect is any of the following:

I.Fixing, raising, concerting or manipulating the price of sale or purchase of goods or services at which they are offered or demanded in the markets;

II.Establishing the obligation of not producing, processing, distributing, commercializing or acquiring except only a restricted or limited quantity of goods or the provision or transaction of a restricted or limited number, volume or frequency of services;

III.Dividing, distributing, assigning or imposing portions or segments of a current or potential market of goods and services, by means of clientele, suppliers, determined or determinable times or spaces;

IV.Establishing, concerting or coordinating positions or the abstention in the biddings, contests, auctions or public sales, and

V.Exchanging information with any of the objects or effects to which the preceding sections refer.

The crime provided in this Article shall be prosecuted by complaint of the Federal Economic Competition Commission (Comisión Federal de Competencia Económica) or of the Federal Telecommunications Institute (Instituto Federal de Telecomunicaciones), as corresponds, which may only be formulated with the opinion of probable responsibility, in the terms of what is provided in the Federal Economic Competition Law (Ley Federal de Competencia Económica).

There shall not exist criminal responsibility for the economic agents that avail themselves of the benefit to which Article 103 of the Federal Economic Competition Law refers, prior resolution of the Federal Economic Competition Commission or of the Federal Telecommunications Institute that determines that it complies with the terms established in said provision and the other applicable ones.

The processes followed for this crime may be dismissed at the request of the Plenary of the Federal Economic Competition Commission or of the Federal Telecommunications Institute, when the accused comply with the administrative sanctions imposed and, in addition, the requirements provided in the technical criteria issued by the Federal Economic Competition Commission or the Federal Telecommunications Institute are complied with.

The criminal action shall prescribe in a term equal to the arithmetic mean term of the penalty depriving of liberty to which the first paragraph of this Article refers.