Antitrust Law Daily Wrap Up, ANTITRUST NEWS: Deputy Assistant AG Snyder promotes individual accountability for antitrust crimes, (Feb 22, 2016)

By Greg Hammond, J.D.

Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brent Snyder on February 19 presented remarks, entitled “Individual Accountability for Antitrust Crimes,” at the Yale School of Management Global Antitrust Enforcement Conference in New Haven, Connecticut. He emphasized that individuals commit the crimes for which corporate offenders pay and that the Justice Department should ensure that these lawbreakers are held accountable.

“Holding companies accountable and assessing large fines, alone, are not the only means, or even the most effective way, to accomplish our goal of deterring and ending cartels,” Snyder’s prepared remarks stated. “Every corporate crime involves individual wrongdoing.”

“[I]t is our obligation at the Justice Department to ensure that we are holding lawbreakers accountable regardless of whether they commit their crimes on the street corner or in the boardroom,” he observed. “In the white-collar context, that means pursuing not just corporate entities, but also the individuals through which these corporations act.”

Snyder noted that the Antitrust Division is successfully prosecuting more individuals at higher levels within their companies and obtaining longer prison sentences. Over the last 30 years, the average prison sentence has increased three-fold, from an average of eight months in the 1990s, to an average of 24 months for fiscal years 2010 through 2015, according to Snyder. Prison sentences in the United States for foreign defendants living abroad have also increased from an average of four months from fiscal years 1990 through 1999 to 15.5 months in fiscal years 2010 through 2015.

Although Snyder believes the Antitrust Division’s record with regard to individual accountability speaks for itself, he pointed out that the agency is taking steps to do even better. Specifically, he stated that the Antitrust Division has adopted new internal procedures to ensure that each office systematically identifies all potentially culpable individuals as early in the investigative process as feasible and to bring cases against individuals as quickly as possible to minimize the risk that the cases will be time-barred or that evidence will become stale.

He also commented that the Antitrust Division is undertaking a more comprehensive review of the organizational structure of culpable companies to ensure that the agency is identifying and investigating all senior executives who potentially condoned, directed, or participated in the criminal conduct.

News: Antitrust AntitrustDivisionNews