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The CMA Cartels and Criminal Group has launched a campaign to hire a number of talented individuals across a range of specialisms including intelligence, civil cartel enforcement and digital forensics.

The Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) Cartels and Criminal Group has launched a campaign to hire a number of talented individuals across a range of specialisms including intelligence, civil cartel enforcement and digital forensics.

As part of the CMA’s plans for bringing about a step-change in cartel and criminal enforcement, the CMA expects to increase the size of its Cartels and Criminal Group by more than a third by the end of March 2015. Cartels are a major barrier to competition. They artificially increase prices for purchasers (whether consumers, businesses or government), reduce output and innovation, disincentivise efficiency and lead to consumer harm.

As part of its campaign, the CMA is holding its first recruitment open evening on 28 January. This will offer potential employees an insight into the CMA’s enforcement work, while also learning about the Cartels and Criminal Group and the available roles.

The CMA is looking for individuals who have either got significant experience in competition or regulatory law and casework, or in complex litigation, or whose experience may be more limited but who would like to the opportunity to develop their knowledge and skills.

Since the CMA’s launch in April last year, a number of appointments have been made across the Cartels and Criminal Group’s intelligence, investigator, criminal prosecution and disclosure, civil cartel, digital forensics and casework support teams. These appointments included the creation of a 4th team of specialist investigators to carry out large-scale ‘dawn raids’ and subsequent investigations, as well as the appointment of 3 directors in the fields of Criminal Enforcement, Intelligence and Digital Forensics.

Sonya Branch, CMA Executive Director, Enforcement, said:

The CMA offers intellectually-stimulating careers working on cases that have a real impact on the lives of people across the UK.

These are challenging roles and we are looking for talented individuals to help us drive forward our enforcement work.

The CMA is based in Holborn, Central London, but is active across all 4 nations of the UK. It has recently published its draft Annual Plan for 2015 to 16.

For further information and to register for the open evening emailcartels.recruitment@cma.gsi.gov.uk.

In addition to the recruitment into the Cartels and Criminal Group, the CMA is also growing other parts of the organisation with extra economists and other professionals being added to the ranks.

Notes for editors

1. The CMA is the UK’s primary competition and consumer authority. It is an independent non-ministerial government department with responsibility for carrying out investigations into mergers, markets and the regulated industries and enforcing competition and consumer law. From 1 April 2014 it took over the functions of the Competition Commission and the competition and certain consumer functions of the Office of Fair Trading.
2. Enquiries should be directed to Simon Belgard (Simon.Belgard@cma.gsi.gov.uk) or by ringing 020 3738 6472.
3. For more information see the CMA’s homepage, follow us on Twitter@CMAgovuk, Flickr and LinkedIn. Sign up to our daily email alerts to receive updates on Competition Act 1998 and cartels cases.