The South African Competition Commission (SACC) has conducted a search and seizure (dawn raid) operation at the premises of Human Communications (Pty) Ltd, Kone Staffing Solutions (Pty) Ltd and JobVest (Pty) Ltd.

The firms are recruitment agencies specialising in recruitment advertising services who place job advertisements in media platforms on behalf of clients. The agencies also receive and process responses to the job advertisements on behalf of their clients, which are mainly government departments, agencies and municipalities.

The SACC has indicated that the dawn raid operation forms part of the SACC’s investigation into alleged collusive conduct in the market for the provision of recruitment advertising services.

The SACC alleges that the firms collude when bidding for tenders by discussing responses to requests for quotations and decide on the price at which each would tender for its services.  Finally, the SACC alleged that the agencies agree on how to rotate advertising work amongst them.

The alleged conduct is prohibited by the South African  Competition Act as it amounts to price fixing, market division and collusive tendering.