April 10, 2014
Parties in price-fixing, market division and other competition/antitrust cartels can go to some fairly extensive lengths to conceal agreements.
While perhaps not Get Smart elaborate, though Maxwell Smart was known as “Agent 86” and his female partner agent “99”, some examples include: secret venues for meetings (or on the fringes of associations); establishing sham industry associations; creating false “covers” for meetings; using disposable mobile phones or home phone numbers; meeting in remote locations; staggering arrivals and departures at meetings; code names for groups, meetings and/or products; and the old classic – “nothing in writing”.
Yes folks, though hard to believe, this stuff happens. Clearly an off-the-shelf compliance program won’t do much against this. With respect to code names in particular, I was curious what cartel participants had come up with over the past few years so did a quick search. Here are a few entertaining “cartel code words” I came up with on my sweep this morning:
“Gardening Club” (freight forwarding, price-fixing: here).
“Store checks” (meetings in suburban Paris hotels) (consumer goods, price-fixing: here).
“A1, A2” (Japanese manufacturers), “B1, B2, B3” (European manufacturers), “C” (the smallest manufacturer) (marine hoses, price-fixing: here).
“Blue Saloon Group” (named after a Hamburg bar where meetings were held) (paraffin wax, price-fixing: here).
“Petete” (after a children’s TV show) (bitumen, price-fixing and market sharing: here).
“Cold” (for a group of Japanese companies) (graphite electrodes, price-fixing and market sharing).
“Project Green” (beer, price-fixing).
“Europe-Japan Club” (seamless steel tubes, market sharing: here).
“Southern Cross Association” (bearings price fixing cartel in Australia)
What can I say other than: does anyone know who has the shoe phone?
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