Cartel and Market Abuse Offences

The legislation governing anti-competitive behaviour has recently undergone reform. The creation in the Enterprise Act 2002 of a "cartel offence", carrying a criminal penalty and targeted at individuals, supplemented pre-existing legislation in the Competition Act 1998 which was aimed at corporate bodies.

We have advised as to those steps that companies and individual officers ought to take to ensure their internal procedures are compliant with the recent legislation. It is in the nature of cases involving allegations of anti-competitive behaviour that taking appropriate action at an early stage can minimise the negative consequences of an investigation or even avoid criminal proceedings altogether. With our established expertise in financial crime and commercial and regulatory law we can deal from an early stage with any investigation launched by the Office of Fair Trading or the Serious Fraud Office, a recent example being our involvement in the latter's ongoing investigation into allegations of price fixing in the pharmaceutical industry.