ANALYSIS: Antitrust Whistleblower Act Adds Wrinkle to Reporting

Sens. Chuck Grassley and Patrick Leahy have finally succeeded in extending whistleblower protections to antitrust law. The pair of senior lawmakers have cosponsored in each of the four previous congresses a similar bill to forbid retaliation against people who report criminal antitrust violations to the Department of Justice, modeled after whistleblower protections in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and intended to provide incentives for employees to report anti-competitive conduct.

The question is whether there was a whistleblower problem to solve. Now that the Criminal Antitrust Anti-Retaliation Act of 2019 (CAARA), S. 2258, is the law of the land, will it increase ...