Competition (Jersey) Law 2005
Guidelines
8. How to Make a Complaint
Draft
2
1. Introduction
The Competition (Jersey) Law 2005 (‘the Law’) prohibits anti-competitive arrangements
and abuses of dominant position within Jersey, (or part of Jersey). The Law also
prohibits parties to certain merger and acquisitions from executing such transactions
without the prior approval of the JCRA. The JCRA is entitled to conduct an investigation
under the Law if it has ‘reasonable cause to suspect’ that a person is in breach of one or
more of these requirements.
The JCRA may have ‘reasonable cause to suspect’ an infringement from what its staff
read in the newspapers, from market intelligence, or from anecdotal evidence. However,
since the facts giving rise to a potential infringement are not usually in the public domain,
the JCRA will rely greatly on information it receives directly from businesses or
customers who are victims of anti-competitive behaviour. It therefore encourages
businesses and customers with evidence of such behaviour to provide such evidence to
the JCRA in the form of complaints. The JCRA will then examine the complaint to see if
it has grounds to commence an investigation under the Law, and if so, will commence an
investigation if appropriate.
The purpose of this Guideline is to help consumers, businesses and their advisers on how
best to present a complaint to the JCRA under the Law, so that the JCRA can deal with it
in an efficient and timely manner.
Complaints should be in writing
The JCRA cannot investigate complaints which are spurious, or are unsupported by
factual evidence. For this reason, complaints should be made in writing, using the
Complaint Form attached in the Annex to the Guideline. The Complaint Form requires
the complainant to certify that the information is correct to the best of the complainant’s
knowledge and belief. In the case of a company, the form must be signed by a Director
or the Comp