Long Time Coming: United States Wins First Extradition On Antitrust Charge

On April 4, 2014, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced its first-ever successfully litigated extradition of a foreign citizen to the United States in a federal criminal antitrust case. This was an inevitable next step in the decades-long internationalization of federal criminal antitrust enforcement.

Before this development, foreign citizens had long been prosecuted under U.S. antitrust laws when found here after indictment. So too, foreign nationals abroad have sometimes chosen to submit to U.S. jurisdiction. The recent prosecutions in the DOJ's global auto parts and LCD investigations, for example, have yielded several cases of Japanese and Korean citizens who chose this course, even though the prospect of their compelled extradition to the United States was uncertain.