Plastics firms fined €344.5m

FIVE of Europe’s most powerful plastics companies met in a Dublin hotel room in October 1999 to set the price for plastic moulding compounds.

Yesterday they were fined a total of €344.5 million for price gouging.

Handwritten notes showed they agreed on a price as of January 2000 and choreographed the announcements to be made by different companies in the various countries.