Some of Germany’s top sausage makers who had been linked to price-fixing in an investigation by the Federal Cartel Office back in 2014, and were facing a collective fine of 338 million euros ($380 million), are giving thanks to a loophole now known as the ‘sausage gap’ that has allowed a number of these manufactures to skirt the fines all together, cancelling out over 238 million euros ($267 million).
The ‘sausage gap’ loophole allowed sausage makers to involve themselves in illegal price-fixing schemes, and before being caught and prosecuted, would undergo an internal restructuring or takeover that would then cancel out any liability for previous activities.
Since discovering the loophole, new laws were put on the books in Germany to now make the new parent companies fully liable for the past illegal activities, but for many of these sausage makers who took advantage of the law, it was decided that they cannot be fined for doing what was technically legal at the time of the price-fixing.
