The DOJ’s Whistleblower Program And Leniency

The DOJ Antitrust Division’s new Whistleblower Rewards Program could have negative unintended consequences for the leniency program and corporate compliance programs. I wrote about it in an article just published in Law360, titled “How Internal Reporting Could Benefit Antitrust Whistleblowing.”

The Whistleblower Rewards Program has caused a stir in the antitrust community and will certainly be the topic of much discussion at the ABA Antitrust Spring Meeting next week. It signifies a sea change in how the government approaches criminal antitrust case generation. Where the DOJ formerly relied on its long-running (and massively successful) corporate leniency program, it now looks to incentivize individual employees to race against the company to report directly to the government.