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No Good Whistle Goes Unpunished: Can We Protect European Antitrust Leniency Applications From Discovery?, Constanza Nicolosi

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

In recent years, the most successful tool in the antitrust arsenal of the European Commission and the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice has proven to be leniency programs, which provide full immunity from fines to the first cartel-member that confesses its participation in the conspiracy. Even though European and U.S. leniency programs are fairly similar to one another, procedural differences may undermine their effectiveness. It has long been argued that potential discovery of corporate statements accompanying the leniency application before the Commission in subsequent proceedings in the United States would put the firms that cooperated with the …