Close to a month ago, I noticed these two stories about the Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore (CCCS) published in The Straits Times on consecutive days:
- “Secretive chicken cartel taken down by a tip-off” (Sept 24); and
- “Grab, Uber fined $13m for violating competition laws“(Sept 25).
From these two stories alone, the CCCS stands to collect some $39 million worth of fines from the firms mentioned.
And that’s after subtracting the whistle-blower’s reward mentioned in the chicken cartel story!
I sent an e-mail message to the two journalists whose bylines were on those stories asking them if it might be possible to do a story on the following:
- On average, how much does the CCCS collect, in fines, each year?
- What happens to the fines collected by the CCCS?
I thought it’d be in the public interest to understand how – and how much – monies collected by the CCCS are eventually returned to Singaporean consumers.
Unfortunately, I haven’t seen any follow-up stories on those two questions yet, on any media platform.
I thought I’d share my curiosity with everyone else, in case some other media outlet might be able to provide some answers to my questions.
