A competition law expert has said that successful convictions would have a "fabulous deterrent effect" on companies' behaviour.
Under a reported deal cut between the oil industry executives and US prosecutors three men would be tried in the UK for price fixing and would serve a sentence here, as long as they pleaded guilty.
Operating a cartel was made illegal for the first time by the Enterprise Act in 2002, but the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has not yet prosecuted anyone under the new law.
Bryan Allison and David Brammar of Dunlop Oil and Marine and consultant Peter Whittle are accused of price-fixing in the market for hoses which connect oil tankers and storage facilities.
Lawyers acting for anonymous companies that have taken a claim for compensation against the companies the men worked for said that they believed that the alleged activity increased the price of the goods by more than 10-12%, a common benchmark indicating over-charging in competition cases.
Edward Anderson, a competition law specialist at Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind OUT-LAW.COM, said that a successful case could have a major impact on the way companies do business.
"People talk about the huge fines that [the European Commission] can levy, 10% of turnover. But seeing that people have actually been put away would have a fabulous deterrent effect for the OFT," said Anderson.
"They don't need six or seven cases, if these guys go to prison then people will look at that and say, I need to find out what I need to do to make sure this doesn't happen to me," said Anderson.
The deal cut with US prosecutors is a first, and is being seen as part of a strategy by the US to pressurise other countries into taking more action in cartel and price-fixing cases. The US authorities are said to be prepared to allow the men to return and serve a sentence in the UK, which they would discount against the US sentence.
Should any UK sentence be shorter than that in the US, it is understood that prosecutors would reserve the right to extradite the men to serve the rest of a US sentence.
The prosecution is the first to reach the courts in the UK under the Enterprise Act, but Anderson said that this should not be read as a failure.
"When this act came into force people realised that this was something that would arise very infrequently, so it is no surprise that there is very little precedent to look at," he said. "The level of evidence you require for a criminal prosecution is very high, and if you are dealing with sophisticated cartels they do everything possible to hide correspondence and documents. You also need to show intent, which is very difficult to prove," he said.
