An 18-month trial scheme of payments to informants has been
launched by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), which said that
payments could in some cases reach £100,000, but only when strict
conditions are met.
"Rewards will be paid only where information is accurate,
verifiable and proves to be useful in the OFT's anti-cartel
enforcement work, and will be calculated according to a set formula
and not subject to negotiation," said an OFT statement.
Incentives already exist for companies involved in
anti-competitive behaviour. EU rules allow companies to avoid fines
if they approach the European Commission with information about
abuses they have participated in.
There is a sliding scale of discounts on fines available to
companies under Commission rules which is used to reflect the level
of co-operation at a corporate level.
The UK's plans will make rewards at an individual level, though,
in a plan which the OFT hopes will help it to prosecute companies
for cartel behaviour.
"We believe that it is in the public interest to offer financial
incentives in the hope that it will encourage more people who have
good information about the existence of hard core cartel activity
to come forward, and in exceptional circumstances these incentives
may be as high as £100,000," said Simon Williams, OFT senior
director of cartels and criminal enforcement.
Cartels are illegal under the Competition Act, which says that
companies can be fined up to 10% of their turnover if caught. The
operation of a cartel became a criminal offence in the UK for the
first time in 2002 with the passing of the Enterprise Act.
"Cartels are very damaging both to businesses and consumers and
they are usually conducted in secret, making them hard to detect,"
said Williams. "Cartels are not the preserve of big business – for
example, if a local authority needs to find a contractor to
refurbish its schools, it is unacceptable for local contractors to
seek to rig the tender process by colluding on price. That's bad
for taxpayers, consumers and other businesses."
