Foreword

Pages14-15
xiii
FOREWORD
The Antitrust Law Section of the American Bar Association is proud
to present this fourth edition of the Handbook on Antitrust Grand Jury
Investigations.
Criminal violations of the federal antitrust laws are prosecuted under
the Sherman Act, which was passed in 1890. For most of its first 100
years, the Sherman Act’s criminal cases were largely made up of
domestic price fixing and bid rigging conspiracies affecting small
geographic markets. Antitrust cartel violations were origin ally
misdemeanors and carried sentences of one year or less. The maximum
fine was $5,000, which in today’s dollars barely exceeds $150,000.
Today, the maximum jail sentence and the maximum fine available
under the Sherman Act are 10 years and $100 million, respectively. But
the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice has been able to
obtain substantially higher fines under the Alternative Fines Act (AFA),
which provides for fines up to twice the gain or loss caused by the
conspiracy being prosecuted. Since the mid-1990s, most of the
Division’s cases have been international in scope, and the pace of change
in this area of law has been increasingly rapid.
Given the developments in criminal antitrust practice, a revision of
the third edition of the Antitrust Grand Jury Investigations Handbook,
published in 2002, has been long overdue. Since that time, among other
things, the Antitrust Division:
Obtained nine of the 10 largest corporate fines for a Sherman
Act violation, including a record $925 million fine imposed in a
case arising out of the Division’s foreign currency exchange
investigation;
Proved the gains earned by the liquid crystal display (LCD)
panel conspiracy under the AFA, the first time that the
Division’s ability to obtain fines above the Sherman Act’s
maximum fine of $100 million was tested in a criminal trial;

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