Frédéric Louis contributed a chapter to ICLG - Cartels & Leniency, which covers common issues in cartels & leniency laws and regulations including legislative framework, investigative powers, sanctions, leniency, whistle-blowing procedures, plea bargaining arrangements, appeal process and damages actions.
Excerpt: In last year’s contribution, we focused on the reasons behind the drop in leniency applications, in particular for global cartels, arguing that ambivalent treatment of leniency applicants had compromised the essential bargain behind the success of leniency programmes, i.e. the necessity for absolute certainty, and had massively raised the costs of applying for leniency. While initially shy about their diminishing inventory of leniency cases, enforcers are increasingly acknowledging the problem. Yet, beyond vague declarations of intent and focusing on promoting other enforcement tools, very little is being done to revive the leniency goose. In this chapter, we recall the ailments leniency programmes are suffering from while proposing some remedies to revitalise these programmes.
