UK criminal cartel offence–pre-April 2014 [Archived]

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Practice notes

UK criminal cartel offence–pre-April 2014 [Archived]

Copyright © 2025 LexisNexis

Produced in partnership with Winston & Strawn

Practice notes
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ARCHIVED–this archived practice note provides information on pre—2014 criminal Cartel offence and reflects the position prior to the Entry into force of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2014 (1 April 2014). It is not maintained.

The criminal cartel offence prohibits individuals from engaging in Cartel activity in the UK.

For the cartel offence to apply, there used to be a requirement that the individual must have dishonestly entered into one or more of the following arrangements:

  1. •

    price-fixing

  2. •

    output restriction

  3. •

    market or customer allocation, or

  4. •

    bid-rigging

The cartel activity must relate to products or services in the UK and be between individuals at competing companies.

The cartel offence may be committed even if the arrangements are not implemented or are unsuccessful. Instead, the question is whether an individual has made an agreement to engage in cartel activity (eg to fix prices), and whether he or she did so dishonestly; no competition law assessment will be required.

If an individual is being investigated under the cartel offence

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Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom
Related legal acts:
Key definition:
Cartel definition
What does Cartel mean?

A cartel is an anti-competitive agreement, anti-competitive concerted practice, or anti-competitive arrangement by competitors to fix prices, make rigged bids (collusive tenders), establish output restrictions or quotas, or share or divide markets by allocating customers, suppliers, territories, or lines of commerce.

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