President Obama has called for a determined effort to free America from the hold of the international oil cartel.

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Because its sister company, De Beers for which Mr Boulle used to work runs the international diamond cartel, it has fallen foul of America's antitrust laws.

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He has burnished his reputation lately by breaking up an international vitamin cartel, being called in by a federal judge to handle a class action against Sotheby's and Christie's auction houses, and representing Napster in its fight against the record companies over copyright infringement.

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Profitability in vitamins has suffered since the European Commission broke up an international price-fixing cartel in which Roche was a leading figure.

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Both the oil cartel Opec and the International Energy Agency (IEA) have raised their forecasts for oil demand next year, but they say economic growth and hence demand for oil is set to remain relatively subdued in the developed world.

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Gazprom is essentially controlled by the Kremlin and has increasingly been viewed as a useful tool on the international stage by Putin, who has recently called for a gas cartel along the same lines as OPEC.

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"The cartels have been able to recruit tens of thousands of killers in part because poor neighborhoods have been systematically abandoned over decades and lack sufficient schools, community centers and security -- in short they lack opportunity, " the International Crisis Group said in a recent report on Mexico's cartel violence.

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The prosecution had alleged Noriega laundered the 2.3m euros from Colombia's Medellin drug cartel in the late 1980s through the now-defunct Bank of Credit and Commerce International.

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