The Senate has passed legislation I introduced with Senator Patrick Leahy that would extend whistleblower protection for private sector employees who provide information to the Department of Justice related to criminal antitrust violations. The bill must still be considered by the House of Representatives. Senator Leahy and I are the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has policy jurisdiction over antitrust laws.
The Criminal Antitrust Anti-Retaliation Act is part of my ongoing effort to strengthen whistleblower laws and advocate on behalf of whistleblowers.
Current law encourages self-reporting of criminal antitrust activity, yet it doesn’t provide any protections for innocent third parties who blow the whistle on such activity. Our bill strengthens the enforcement of criminal antitrust laws by adding a civil remedy for antitrust whistleblowers who are retaliated against.
Some examples of criminal antitrust violations are price fixing or bid rigging. For instance, if an individual working at a company discovers that his company and a competitor are violating the antitrust laws, that person can reach out to either law enforcement officers or someone else who alerts law enforcement to let them know of the violation. Those individuals, as long as they aren’t involved in the crime itself, deserve protection from the company’s taking retaliatory action against them for telling the truth.
The legislation is based on recommendations from a July 2011 Government Accountability Office report and is a natural extension to similar legislation Senator Leahy and I got included in the Sarbanes-Oxley reform. It can be a real deterrent to those who are thinking about committing fraud in the future.
