The UK’s competition watchdog should be concerned by a 70 per cent drop in whistleblowing on illegal cartels in the last five years, top lawyers have said.
A freedom of information (FOI) request from law firm RPC showed the staggering drop in reporting, down from 1,442 calls in 2017 to just 427 in 2022, City A.M. can exclusively reveal.
This comes after the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) raised the amount whistleblowers receive for lifting the lid on illegal activity, up from 100,000 to 250,000.
A cartel is when there is an agreement between companies not to compete in order to keep their prices high, and it is illegal.
Those involved face being fined 10 per cent of their turnover, and individuals looking at five years behind bars, while company directors can also be disqualified or banned for lengthy periods.
The drop showed an increasingly reluctant tendency for whistleblowers to come forward, with the pandemic year of 2020 where millions were stuck at home being a spike as people felt safer.
Despite the figures, it is understood the CMA is not worried, and that it acted across a number of industries in the last five years.
This comes as the watchdog has come under pressure for being too interventionist, including with the Microsoft-Activision Blizzard deal. In July INEOS chair Sir Jim Ratcliffe lashed out at Britain’s competition watchdog for being “increasingly hostile” to business – after it blocked a $1bn deal involving his firm.
The FOI doesn’t show which...
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