State Launches Formal Price Gouging Investigation PodCast (12/10/2008)

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I’m Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum. 

Yesterday, Florida Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson and I announced that our offices have jointly opened a formal price gouging investigation into a major gasoline supplier. 

We want to determine exactly what led to the extraordinary increases in gasoline prices prior to Hurricane Ike. 

We believe TransMontaigne, a subsidiary of Morgan Stanley, may have raised its price of wholesale gasoline which it supplies, through distributors, to stations throughout Florida. 

Our state will not tolerate inexplicable increases in prices during a declared state of emergency. I look forward to continuing this investigation with the Commissioner and getting to the bottom of this issue. 

I’m Bill McCollum and this has been a consumer protection update.