The South African National Roads Agency Limited (Sanral) has lodged civil damages claims with the Gauteng Local Division High Court against the construction firms the competition authorities had investigated for collusive conduct.

Seven construction firms and joint ventures had been served papers for claims of between R600-million and R760-million for work undertaken nationwide, including the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project (GFIP).

Sanral said it had suffered damages and overcharges as a result of the companies’ alleged collusive conduct.

While Sanral did not disclose all the defendants it was targeting, Murray & Roberts (M&R) and Raubex this week confirmed that they had received civil summonses from Sanral.

M&R averred it would defend the summonses and pointed out that there were certain road works listed that it did not execute.

This followed an ongoing, years-long process by the Competition Commission and Competition Tribunal that saw 15 major construction firms fined a collective R1.46-billion for “rampant” collusive tendering related to projects concluded between 2006 and 2011.

In 2013, 21 firms in the construction industry had submitted applications to the commission under a ‘Construction Fast-Track Settlement Process’, which covered instances of collusion or anticompetitive behaviour in over 300 public- and private-sector projects worth an estimated R47-billion.

The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) on Tuesday slammed what it says was a mere “slap in the face” response by Sanral, with chairperson Wayne Duvenage stating that it took Sanral “nearly three years” to come up with a “miniscule calculation” of up to R760-million in a process that was “vague and lacking in detail”.

“This adjustment makes little difference to the estimated R10-billion to R11-billion overpriced construction costs for GFIP,” he said.

Sanral’s move followed “months of hard work” in an effort to quantify the damages suffered by the roads agency,” Sanral spokesperson Vusi Mona said in a statement this week.

“We had to be thorough in our assessment of the damages and were not going to be rushed into this action ill-prepared.

“Some of our detractors doubted our intention to file for damages, accusing us of delays, with some going to the extent of suggesting the agency was colluding with the industry.”