Petrol price fixing scandal: Call for oil giant bosses to be jailed if found guilty 

 

The bosses of oil giants engulfed in a price fixing scandal could be jailed if they are found guilty, David Cameron warned yesterday.
Mr Cameron said new legislation means the firms and their executives would face “major consequences” if they have ripped off drivers by fiddling wholesale oil prices.
His stern words follow raids on the London offices of BP and Shell – companies which have both raked in multibillion-pound profits this year – by investigators probing accusations of price rigging.
There are fears that millions of drivers have been paying well over the odds for petrol and diesel for a decade.
The investigators said if oil prices had been made artificially high it would have led to rocketing costs at the pumps.
The alleged price rigging has been going on since 2002.
Between then and now petrol prices have risen by an astonishing 80% to an average of 135p a litre.
It is not just motorists who would have been clobbered by the scandal.
The probe relates to a pricing process used by ­information specialist Platts.
Figures produced by the firm and other agencies are used as a guide for pricing a wide array of oil-related products.
So price rigging may have affected the cost of everything from gas to chemicals used to make plastic in products we all use.
Platts in London was also raided on Tuesday as part of the probe across the continent by the European Commission’s competition authorities.
The AA and the RAC yesterday demanded to know the truth – as haulage firms said they would demand compensation if claims of price fixing were proved.