href=”http://www.g5.co.za/”> Group Five, the JSE-listed construction company, had signed conditional leniency agreements with the Competition Commission, CEO Mike Upton, revealed on Wednesday morning.

“We have signed these agreements with the Commission…as it progresses with its investigations,” Upton said.

He said as announced in 2011 already, Group Five adopted a proactive stance from 2008 in respect of the on-going investigation by the Competition Commission into alleged anti-competitive behaviour within the construction industry.

“The group has continued to co-operate with the Commission for the last few years in the interest of determining if it had any exposure and to take advantage of the Commission’s leniency programme to limit the risk of any penalties and/or fines,” Upton added.

Last week, the Competition Commission said investigations by the Hawks, South Africa’s elite crime fighting unit, into cartels, bid-rigging and collusion in the construction sector was something exceptional.

The Hawks investigation was separate and independent of the commission’s investigation and fast-track settlement process involving the construction sector announced in 2011.

City Press, South Africa’s second biggest English Sunday newspaper, had reported that the Hawks were investigating a cartel in the building industry. It said evidence in a major fraud and racketeering probe showed top construction industry leaders illegally rigged state and other contracts, including two FIFA World Cup stadium deals, worth billions of rand.

In February 2011, the deputy competition commissioner, Tembinkosi Bonakele, said South Africa’s all five major listed construction firms had been implicated in anti-competitive practices during its probe into 65 bid-rigging cases in the sector involving more than 70 projects valued at R29 billion ($3.2 billion).