WASHINGTON – Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and Senator Patrick Leahy today reintroduced legislation to extend whistleblower protection for employees who provide information to the Department of Justice related to criminal antitrust violations.
The Criminal Antitrust Anti-Retaliation Act seeks to protect whistleblowers in criminal antitrust cases by prohibiting employers from retaliating against an employee who provides information to the Department of Justice regarding conduct that violates the criminal antitrust laws. The Senate unanimously passed a similar version of the legislation in both 2013 and 2015.
“Violations of our antitrust laws hurt consumers, often in the form of less choice and higher prices. Without the help of industry whistleblowers, these sorts of violations often go on unchecked. This legislation encourages private sector employees to disclose such criminal violations by protecting them from retaliation in the workplace for coming forward with information. It also can be a real deterrent to those who are thinking about committing fraud in the future. We’ve seen how whistleblower protections can be a real incentive to helping root out waste, fraud and abuse. This can be another tool in the toolbox to stop individuals who are looking at criminal antitrust activities,” Grassley said.
“Whistleblowers play an essential role in alerting the public, Congress, and law enforcement agencies to wrongdoing that directly harms consumers. These individuals take significant risks in making disclosures and deserve protections. The Senate has now twice passed unanimously the Criminal Antitrust Anti-Retaliation Act to provide meaningful protection to those who blow the whistle on illegal behavior such as price fixing. I am proud to partner again with Senator Grassley, and I hope this year Congress will finally enact our bipartisan bill,” Leahy said.
The Grassley-Leahy bill is based on recommendations from a Government Accountability Office report released in July 2011. The bill allows an employee who believes he or she is the victim of retaliation to file a complaint with the Secretary of Labor, and provides for that employee to be reinstated to their former status if the Secretary finds in their favor. Grassley and Leahy authored similar whistleblower statutes as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002.
Text of the Criminal Antitrust Anti-Retaliation Act is available HERE.
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