{"id":20577,"date":"2026-02-09T14:08:38","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T14:08:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gangsterismout.com\/?p=20577"},"modified":"2026-03-14T14:08:51","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T14:08:51","slug":"indian-cement-cartel-unstuck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gangsterismout.com\/?p=20577","title":{"rendered":"Indian cement cartel unstuck"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When India&#8217;s largest oil explorer opened a tender for a cement order in 2018 the competing bids were all exactly 7,000 rupees per metric ton. Oil \u200band Natural Gas Corporation queried the bids and got a wry reply from an executive at India Cements. Seven was his &#8220;lucky number&#8221;.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/gangsterismout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Screenshot-2026-03-09-095001.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"870\" height=\"500\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20578\" srcset=\"https:\/\/gangsterismout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Screenshot-2026-03-09-095001.png 870w, https:\/\/gangsterismout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Screenshot-2026-03-09-095001-300x172.png 300w, https:\/\/gangsterismout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Screenshot-2026-03-09-095001-768x441.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 870px) 100vw, 870px\" \/><br \/>\n ONGC quietly lodged an antitrust case against three Indian \u200ccement companies. A five-year probe found a decade of price collusion targeting state-run ONGC. The Indian cement firms&#8217; bid rigging, discussions of supply patterns and efforts to oust foreign bidders were &#8220;substantiated from strong \u200bevidences in form of communication, meetings, emails, admission,&#8221; said the 90-page report.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/gangsterismout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Screenshot-2026-03-09-095035.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"652\" height=\"462\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20579\" srcset=\"https:\/\/gangsterismout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Screenshot-2026-03-09-095035.png 652w, https:\/\/gangsterismout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Screenshot-2026-03-09-095035-300x213.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 652px) 100vw, 652px\" \/><br \/>\nDalmia Bharat declined comment. India Cements, which was acquired \u200bby No. 1 player UltraTech (ULTC.NS) didn&#8217;t respond, and neither did Shree Digvijay, ONGC or the CCI. The cement companies have been asked to respond to the report and the watchdog will then issue a final order within months. \u200bIt has powers to drop any of the investigation findings, but fines can go as high as three times the companies&#8217; profit. In 2024-25, Dalmia Bharat had annual revenues of $1.5 billion, Shree Digvijay $79 million and India Cements $444 million. The onus of breaches are on 8 top executives<\/p>\n<table>\n<tr>\n<td><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/graphics\/INDIA-CEMENT\/zjvqmklknvx\/chart.png\" width=\"450\" \/><\/td>\n<td>Included are \u200bformer managing director of Shree Digvijay, Rajeev Nambiar; billionaire \u200bchairman of Dalmia Bharat, Y.H. Dalmia; and former managing \u2060director of India Cements, N. Srinivasan.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p>Shree Digvijay and Dalmia also targeted foreign firms who bid against them. They repeatedly filed complaints with the Indian government about foreign bidders&#8217; lack of certification and how New Delhi should promote domestic firms over foreign ones.<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/gangsterismout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/images-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"270\" \/><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/gangsterismout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Screenshot-2026-03-09-100338.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"270\" \/><\/p>\n<p> The companies tried at least once to pressure ONGC to cancel foreign bids by &#8220;restricting supply&#8221; of cement to the oil explorer, which breaches antitrust laws.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When India&#8217;s largest oil explorer opened a tender for a cement order in 2018 the competing bids were all exactly 7,000 rupees per metric ton. Oil \u200band Natural Gas Corporation queried the bids and got a wry reply from an executive at India Cements. Seven was his &#8220;lucky number&#8221;. ONGC quietly lodged an antitrust case [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20578,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/gangsterismout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Screenshot-2026-03-09-095001.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gangsterismout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gangsterismout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gangsterismout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gangsterismout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gangsterismout.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20577"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/gangsterismout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20591,"href":"https:\/\/gangsterismout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20577\/revisions\/20591"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gangsterismout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gangsterismout.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gangsterismout.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gangsterismout.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}