Antitrust Criminal Penalty Enhancement and Reform Extension Act

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Mr. NADLER of New York. I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, H.R. 5330 extends by 10 years the Antitrust Criminal Penalty Enhancement and Reform Extension Act of 2004, an important tool in combating illegal cartel behavior.

Set to expire next month, the 2004 act promotes the detection and prosecution of illegal cartel behavior by giving participants in a price-fixing cartel powerful incentives to report the cartel to the Justice Department's Antitrust Division and to cooperate in the investigation and prosecution.

Criminal cartel enforcement targets some of the worst crimes perpetrated on American consumers, but these crimes are not easily detected because the actual criminal activity takes place in secret meetings, behind closed doors among willing coconspirators. So even with the hard work of the Antitrust Division, price-fixing cartels can often go undetected. With hundreds of millions, or even billions, of dollars of unlawful profits at stake, these criminals work hard to keep their actions secret.

In August 1993, the Antitrust Division revised its existing program to destabilize cartels by giving cartel participants a strong incentive to break the code of silence and report the cartel. This program offers amnesty from criminal prosecution for the first company to report the cartel.

The company cannot have been the ringleader, and it has to continue cooperating fully with the criminal investigation and prosecution. The company's executives also receive amnesty if they give full cooperation. But there was still a disincentive for cartel participants to come forward because they remained subject to treble damages and joint and several liability in accompanying civil litigation.

Six years ago, this Congress gave the Antitrust Division a new weapon to attack this disincentive head on. ACPERA, the bill we are talking about, addressed this shortcoming in the criminal leniency program by also eliminating the cooperating party's exposure to civil liability. ACPERA limits the civil liability of the cooperating party to single damages.

The remaining conspirators in the cartel, however, remain jointly and severally liable for all damages and treble damages. In this way the act strikes a carefully crafted balance, encouraging the cartel members to turn on each other while ensuring full compensation to the victims.

The positive impact of this law cannot be overstated. ACPERA aided the Antitrust Division in obtaining $1 billion in criminal fines in fiscal year 2009 alone. Last year, confronted with the expiration of key provisions of ACPERA, we sponsored a bipartisan 1-year extension of the statute.

We have since solicited input from a number of parties, including the Department of Justice, the American Bar Association, noted academics such as William Kovacic, and representatives of civil litigants, leniency applicants, and cartel whistleblowers. I want to ensure that the Justice Department has all the tools that it needs to continue its excellent work protecting consumers from price-fixing cartels.

The legislation before us today extends the law for 10 years and incorporates a number of smaller findings based on other suggestions that have been made. Specifically, it makes minor changes to the law to ensure that companies provide timely cooperation to victims of the cartel in the related civil action in order to receive the reduced damages liability. It also ensures that no one in the amnesty process in the future will be adversely affected if this law were to sunset in the future.

Finally, it commissions the Government Accountability Office, the GAO, to perform a 1-year study to examine several other suggestions that have been made to further improve the law.

I urge my colleagues to support this important legislation.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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