Fair Trade Commission to Impose Dealers to Designate Solidarity Guarantee Obi Brewery Sanctions

OB Beer, which forced all dealerships to designate joint guarantors, will be sanctioned by the Fair Trade Commission.

The Fair Trade Commission has decided to issue a correction order to OB Beer on charges of unfairly using its trading position and penalizing its agencies.

The FTC explained that OB Beer applied a transaction contract from February 2016 to the latest that included establishing joint guarantors for all 452 dealerships.

In particular, the FTC said it did not specify a maximum debt limit for 622 joint guarantors of 436 dealerships.

If the agency owner is unable to pay off the payment bond, it means that the person who made the joint guarantee will be held liable indefinitely.

In the end, the FTC judged that it was difficult for agencies to find joint guarantors, forcing them to have difficulty opening and operating agencies.

In particular, 591 out of 622 joint guarantors, or 95%, were family members, including spouses of employees belonging to agencies.

In some cases, the FTC said, family signatures were forged because they could not find joint guarantors.

However, the FTC decided on the level of sanctions by imposing corrective orders, considering that such contract behavior did not show up to cases such as joint guarantors actually paying off debts instead.