Australian watchdog raids oil firms

Shell is one of the companies under investigation

Australia's consumer watchdog has mounted raids on the country's three biggest oil companies to see whether they are driving up prices by operating in a cartel.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said it was acting on a tip-off from a whistle-blower.

We obviously checked out all the information that she included in her letter, and it did seem to all add up in terms of the names and people that she mentioned and details

Rose Webb
ACCC

More than 90 ACCC officials raided the offices of Caltex Australia, Shell and ExxonMobil - as well as a number of smaller independents - in what the organisation's chairman said was the biggest operation in its 28-year history.

If the information turns out to be true, the companies could face fines of A$10m (US$5.4m; £3.7m) for each offence, with another A$500,000 per offence charged to their executives.

Lime green

The investigation was triggered by a letter from a female employee of one of the three companies to the ACCC.

Written on lime green paper and posted in an envelope with the company's logo on it, the letter - posted in a suburb of Sydney - included names, dates and other details.

No-one knows who she is, ACCC staff have said.

Newspaper adverts asking her to come forward resulted only in a call - placed from an untraceable public phone booth - from someone claiming to be her husband saying she would provide more information but did not want to go public.

"We obviously checked out all the information that she included in her letter, and it did seem to all add up in terms of the names and people that she mentioned and details," said investigation chief Rose Webb on Australian radio.

"It was clear that she was an insider in the company and she had details of documents that existed in the company and she later did provide us with some documents."

The oil companies said they would co-operate.

Caltex said the investigation came as "a complete surprise".

Shell noted that 10 previous inquiries over the past decade had provided no evidence of collusion.