cartel
n. countablen. a group of separate companies or countries that work together to control prices and limit competition. This is usually done to keep prices high and make more money.
n. an association of independent manufacturers or suppliers formed to maintain high prices and restrict competition. Often used in the context of illegal trade or international commodity agreements.
The oil-producing countries formed a powerful cartel.
The government launched an investigation into the major supermarkets to see if they were operating as a price-fixing cartel.
Economic stability in the region was undermined by the presence of a drug cartel that exerted more influence over local politics than the official government did.
In the business sense, borrowed from German Kartell, first used by Eugen Richter in 1871 in the Reichstag. In the political sense, which was the vehicle for this metaphor, the English sense, like the German sense, was borrowed from French cartel in the sixteenth century, from Italian cartello, diminutive of carta (“card, page”), from Latin charta.
Commonly used with verbs like 'form', 'break up', or 'operate'.