European Wax Cartel Members Will Be Burning the Midnight Oil ... In Jail

Posted by D. Daniel Sokol

The NY Times has a lengthy article on the European wax cartel - a throwback to an earlier era:

Most cartels operate in secrecy, destroying documents, encrypting e-mail messages or using prepaid phone cards to erase communication traces. But the paraffin cartel was rare in that some members kept minutes, and attendance lists. Cartel members e-mailed invitations and sought R.S.V.P.’s. They booked each other’s rooms and played host to open bars.

Documents found when investigators first raided the companies in April 2005 included handwritten notes on stationery from hotels on the cartel’s itinerary: the five-star Kempinski in Budapest or Château de Montvillargenne in the bucolic horse country of Chantilly, France.