While Claas keeps its Russian sales and service footprint visible on its own website, Poland’s competition watchdog says its Polish arm spent more than eleven years helping to rig the market against farmers. In December 2025, UOKiK fined Claas Polska and five dealers over PLN 170 million for a long-running cartel built on territorial carve-ups, worse offers for the wrong customers, and a system designed to keep prices fat and choice thin. The decision is not final. The smell already fucking is.
The Polish Hammer Lands
On 8 December 2025, UOKiK dropped the blade on Claas Polska and five authorised dealers. Not for some harmless bit of sales puff or an admin cock-up. For a long-running anti-competitive arrangement that, according to the regulator, stopped farmers buying Claas machinery and spare parts at genuinely competitive prices or from a dealer of their own choosing.
That matters because it kills the usual excuse early. This was not some rogue salesman freelancing in a muddy yard. This was the official Claas distribution network in Poland getting nailed for turning a dealer system into a fenced-off little kingdom.
Eleven Years Of Taking The Piss
UOKiK says the collusion ran from October 2011 to January 2023. More than eleven years. More than a decade of farmers being boxed in while Claas and its network kept the game nice and orderly for themselves.
That is the bit worth dwelling on. Claas sells the usual brochure fantasy – heritage, reliability, partnership, engineering excellence, all the wholesome agricultural wallpaper. Underneath it, the Polish regulator says, sat an arrangement built to make sure loyalty did not produce better prices or real competition. It produced a farmer getting herded back to the approved seller and told to like it.
How Farmers Got Boxed In
The mechanism was grubby and simple. Dealers were assigned territories. If a farmer tried to shop around outside the patch Claas and its network considered his rightful enclosure, he could be redirected to the dealer nearest his farm or handed a deliberately worse offer.
UOKiK even quoted one of the emails. A customer was told he was far from the dealer’s service area and would have to pay a much higher price because of the distance. Best to buy from the nearest dealer, apparently. How convenient. Shop around and get punished for it.
That is not a market. That is a managed funnel with a salesman stood in front of it pretending it is customer care.
Claas Polska Ran The Gate
This is where the thing stops being an embarrassing dealer story and becomes a company story. UOKiK says Claas Polska played an active role in maintaining both the territorial carve-up and the pricing arrangements inside the distribution network. Active role. Not asleep at the wheel. Not innocently copied into the wrong email chain. Active.
According to the decision, Claas Polska acted as coordinator and gatekeeper, monitored dealer behaviour, and sat inside the correspondence when enquiries had to be shoved back to whichever dealer supposedly owned the customer’s turf. Dealers also complained to Claas Polska when one of their number stepped out of line. If a machine was sold into the wrong patch, the invading dealer could even end up paying financial compensation to the dealer whose area had been infringed.
So spare me any fairy tale about a few overexcited resellers. If the regulator is right, this was architecture. Claas Polska was not standing near the racket. It was helping run the fucking thing.
Loyalty Became A Tax
UOKiK boss Tomasz Chróstny made the harm plain enough. Farmers often stick with a brand because they know the machines, know the servicing, know the parts network, and do not want the grief of switching. According to the watchdog, Claas and its network took that loyalty and weaponised it.
That is what makes this more than a dry competition-law bore. Brand loyalty is supposed to be earned. Here, the allegation is that it was monetised. The farmer who came back because he trusted the kit was not rewarded for that trust. He was boxed in by it.
Partnership my arse. That is loyalty turned into a tax.
The Fine Sheet Tells Its Own Story
The total fine came to PLN 170,382,000. Claas Polska took the biggest hit at PLN 71,246,000. Agroas was fined PLN 48,665,000. Agro Sznajder WKP got PLN 15,402,000. Agrimasz took PLN 13,202,000. Świerkot got PLN 12,498,000. Roltex took PLN 9,369,000.
Yes, the decision can still be appealed. No, that does not make the shape of it any prettier.
When the biggest bill lands on Claas Polska, the company UOKiK says coordinated the network, the pattern becomes hard to wriggle out of. This was not a few naughty lads in the provinces freelancing their greed. The centre of the system is where the regulator says the rot sat.
Same Company Same Instinct
That is why this matters beyond Poland. Claas still publicly shows a Russian sales company, a central office in Moscow, a Claas Academy in Krasnodar, a parts warehouse in Klimovsk, and a dealer and service network spread across Russia on its own website.
Different geography. Same instinct.
Keep the machine running. Keep the money flowing. Let someone else swallow the cost.
That is the common thread. Whether it is the moral filth of keeping a polished footprint in Russia or the commercial filth of corralling Polish farmers into a managed market, the instinct is the same. Claas likes control when control pays.
Claas – again?
And earned. The next time Claas starts banging on about quality, heritage, and standing with farmers, remember what the Polish watchdog says those farmers got instead. Restricted choice. Distorted pricing. Territory games. A dealer network that looked less like competition and more like an arranged stitch-up.
And spare me the block-button routine too. Blocking criticism does not unwrite a regulator’s findings. It does not make the Russian footprint disappear. It does not scrub the stink off an eleven-year cartel.
That is why this is a fourth piece.
Some companies get the benefit of the doubt. Claas gets the pattern recognised.
A company that keeps its Russian footprint visible, gets caught helping to rig the market against Polish farmers, and then hides behind silence is not being picked on. It is being described.
Claas is not just harvesting grain.
It is harvesting whatever it can strip from the field, the farmer, and the truth.
Block buttons do not change facts, and Russian footprints do not vanish because a PR team goes quiet.
The green paint, the heritage waffle, the partnership slogans, all of it means fuck all when the market itself is rigged and the moral compass is buried in the mud.
This is not farming excellence. It is organised greed with a harvest logo.
Claasy.
Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project