Unless of course an indictment is the politically determined goal. E.g. that one small Chinese bank that got screwed for the lending bubble that popped in '08.
Sure, as long as they are doing so in good faith. An act like this is clearly not in any sort of good-faith attempt to be in compliance with the law. It's obviously illegal. I would expect (hope?) that regulators and law enforcement would act swiftly and with much more than strongly worded letters and small fines for anyone who does this.
Yes, you are correct that I would definitely claim that this was an egregious action. If people are conspiring to limit the employment prospects and potential income of others and are doing so in a manner that violates the law - yeah that's pretty f'ed in my book and they should, in my opinion, be subject to the harshest punishment the law allows for these instances.
>If this was a couple of small, local competitors who were the only two [whatever] in the area and they did this, I guarantee you the owners would be individually indicted.
No. 100% NO. I guarantee you that the regulators wouldn't care. And if they did care, the 'local competitors' would get AT BEST a slap on the wrist like a strongly worded letter with a time-frame or MAYBE a fine (if that). There would be no indictments.
I work with regulators all the time (FDA, Health Canada), and they will work with you to get you under compliance. Consider the fact that all companies are under a large amount of legal and regulatory constraints and chances are every company is doing something against some law or some regulation (knowingly or unknowingly), and you can see that as long as what you did didn't result in undue hardship (though I'm sure you'll try to claim that this was an egregious action - I disagree) and you fix your behaviour, you'll be fine.