 I suppose just to get started Scott, would you mind just outlining to us your system because as you know we're a little bit different, we have an agency especially that deals with accomplishment here, we do the lot ourselves, but in relation to your own position in the States it's a little bit different, you've got kind of a, you do some of the work and then the FBI does explain that. Well actually your system is much more akin to what you see across the world and it's the United States that's somewhat unique and we're unique because the antitrust division is both an investigative competition authority as well as a prosecuting authority. So we get a lot of assistance from the FBI and occasionally from other investigative agencies, for example if we're working with the Department of Defense we might use our agents or if we're working on a road building case we might be working with agents from our Department of Transportation. So we receive supplemental investigative resources from other agencies but the antitrust division is also involved at the investigative stage and then if there is a prosecution because we're part of the Justice Department we're also involved in bringing that prosecution. We are not the executioner though, we are not a judicial body and so we're not imposing sentences which you also would see in some competition authorities are both investigating and also levying fines or sanctions that's the line is drawn there we don't get involved in actual sensing. So in a sense the Irish system is a little bit in between in that like you we bear cases for courts not a decision-making body but unlike you the whole lot's done in one house we do the investigative work as well as you know bringing case or whatever else whereas it's kind of bifurcated in the States. And just in relation to I suppose your own work since this last thing in the last ten years is it your experience that cartels are becoming more sophisticated? Are you finding them more difficult to detect or becoming more kind of I suppose complex and how they go about their business? What's your own experience and how cartels have been operating? Yeah I mean that's been my experience. Detection of cartels has become more difficult. I think we've had a significant deterrent impact in the United States on cartel activity but those cartels that we haven't been able to deter have become more sophisticated to avoid detection. What we did see many of you I don't know how many of you have seen the movie The Informant or are familiar with that story the lysine cartel that was detected and the covert investigation using the FBI that was our first big international cartel prosecution that was back in the mid-1990s. After that unfortunately the US businesses and consumers continued to be targeted by international cartel activity but most of those meetings and conversations began to take place exclusively outside the United States so in terms of increased sophistication we saw we saw that all of the evidence all the documents most of the participants were outside of the US borders they were still targeting our market but they were doing so outside of the United States. We did and we have seen cartels though that operate have operated around the world affecting markets around the world though that actually stopped at our borders. This has become somewhat interesting to observe this because it's been somewhat satisfying to see that we are having a deterrent effect. So these are cartels that you know you in a large international cartels that have the US is obviously a very desirable market it's very lucrative market some of the companies are involved in selling it in the United States but they have stopped their cartel activity at our borders because of their fear detection and to be more blunt fear going to jail. We learn about some of these cartels because the companies have come forward to seek leniency. Oftentimes they're seeking leniency not just the United States but other jurisdictions. When they've come forward they've said that in their internal investigation it's revealed that the cartel actually stopped in the US that they were afraid to get US officials or US executives involved in the activity perhaps afraid of not just not just at the antitrust division not just at the FBI but of general counsel in the US learning about it or as I said US executives may be more primed on antitrust laws are more concerned about the consequences of violating the US antitrust laws and so these we've been able to do our own due diligence we don't usually accept the word of counsel saying don't worry it stopped in the United States and those investigations have revealed in fact that the cartel activity did not reach into the US. Now I will say that certainly this is some conversation that I've had with our colleagues over the European Union and they have everywhere where cartel enforcement has been ramped up over the years is you're going to see what we experienced in the US many many years ago which is the documents aren't going to be there anymore. I know that it's very rare that we will find a roadmap of the conspiracy in the lower left hand drawer of the executive's office when we come in and do search warrants. I know that it's been the bread and butter of many European investigations to do the don't raise find the documents and then they're off to the races and you know as you become as your as your deterrent effect increases as the profile of the program improves the likelihood that those documents are going to be sitting around waiting to be picked up you know it's going to be greatly diminished. Yes what you're looking for then is as well as electronic kind of tracks as in like you know records on computers text matches and mobile phones direct evidence witnesses. We have to be more sophisticated in our ability to do searches of electronic evidence and which also can be very costly but what we've had to rely upon then is testimony and direct evidence witnesses. Yes and incentives for individuals to cooperate inside your testimony and of course that brings us to the leanings program but to the extent that there are jurisdictions who spread and butter as documents and who don't have the ability to either compel testimony or be able to utilize testimony it's going to be a challenge over time. I take it on use to what economics in our cartel investigations. No that's fair enough to go to that road. How do you reach into cartels that are operating physically outside the United States jurisdiction but are having an effect in America? So they're sending into America but they're not actually operating the meetings take place in Canada or Ireland God help us but how do you get your evidence if they physically don't ever come into the States what's your motives there? Well that so that's a very common scenario that the documents the witnesses and our potential targets are all located outside the United States. How we obtain the evidence obviously over when I shouldn't say obviously because it's it's been a great effort but we've improved our ability to obtain access to those documents through international cooperation we've been able to do the use of treaties and other cooperation agreements have our counterparts abroad execute search warrants on our behalf but I you know the the the most effective way that we've been able to obtain evidence is to have the companies provide that in the way we've been able to obtain that type of cooperation is to our leniency program and a company who wants to cooperate and obtain the benefits of leniency is expected to bring its documents into the United States bring its couple executives to the United States and cooperate fully with the investigation and and that is certainly the quickest and often times the most effective way of obtaining the information and building our cases. One of the most famous well best known recent international cartels the Marine Hose's Cartel would you give us an outline of how that cartel unfolded how you investigated some of the things you just mentioned arise well yeah the well first of all the Marine Hose investigation is an exception to what I just mentioned a moment ago which is that cartels no longer visit the United States that was a situation where they were meeting in the hotel room or excuse me in a conference room in Houston Texas and we knew they were coming and we had the room might and watching their conversation as they discussed fixing prices and actually it was if you've ever not only did they discuss future pricing but someone decided to go to discuss the history of the cartel so talked about all that they had accomplished in the last 10 years and did a we called it a gipper speech you know in terms of you know do want to get this has been so effective and decided to provide a history of how effective have been and encouraging everybody to to buckle down and and get down to business of the cartel once again so the very next morning quite early they all received knocks on the door by the FBI in their hotel room who came armed with DVD players and and played the tape for them and we had confessions on the spot by most of the participants those individuals notes they included three UK executives so we they were arrested and they quickly decided to cooperate with our investigation agreed to plead guilty and agreed to join us in recommending very substantial jail sentences ranging from 20 to 30 months incarceration yes through the cooperation of one of the participants who had come forward and agreed to cooperate with the investigation then we did something that we'd never done before and frankly the Department of Justice had never done before and that was we asked the judge before sentencing these defendants asked if told the judge to release them from the custody of the U.S. Marshals who would have scored them to the airport and with plain tickets back to Heathrow let them return home and we did that because the plea agreement provided that if in contemplated that they would return to the UK and they would cooperate with the U.S. investigation and were they to do that and where they to be convicted and where they to be then sentenced to periods of incarceration that either met or exceeded the jail sentences that were called for in their U.S. plea agreements then they would not be required to return to the United States and and serve those sentences the United States it was obviously a risk for us because we have them in our grips so to speak and we release them they did in fact then return to the UK and I think most of you know the story they were initially sentenced to periods of incarceration that exceeded the jail sentences that were called for in their U.S. plea agreements those sentences were appealed and they were then dropped to the sentences that were called for in their U.S. plea agreements and they never had to return it's something that as I said we took a risk but it's something we were we were willing to do and thank me we would do again because we are hoping we benefit that's we are now speaking for you U.S. businesses and U.S. consumers by building a strong network of enforcement across the world I just described the fact that we are our greatest concern is and what is having the greatest impact on our economy under these large international cartels that are victimizing our consumers if they're operating out of the night outside the United States then we need in order to protect those consumers to have a greater deterrent impact and we can't do it obviously alone these cartels need to fear their competition authorities in their backyard as well and so by if we can do anything to assist enforcement outside the United States it's not altogether altruistic it's done because it benefits us as well. Did you have an agreement in place with the UK authorities with the OFT in advance or was this one these was an ad hoc at that stage and did you put up an agreement in place afterwards what kind of what kind of we were cooperating with the OFT even prior to the execution of the search warrants and the covert operation I just described they were also they were involved in that initial investigation it's also the European Union was as well and at the same time that those knocks on the door were taking place in Houston search warrants were being executed in London actually there was a there was a consecutive search first by the European Union and then by the criminal search conducted by the OFT and so that was coordinated the OFT they cannot enter into play agreements they can't even make sentencing recommendations as I understand it so there was no so there was no agreement between the parties we have a plea agreement there was a written plea agreement it contemplated what I just described but if the executives have arrived in the UK and said more politely but kiss off yes kiss off OFT and to the United States screw you I'm never coming back and you can extradite me if you try you want to try that's where we would have been we would have thought to try to extradite them and those big wisdom yeah you know I mean it was it was a calculated risk was that possible for example the court could have imposed a suspended sentence or it could have given maybe the equivalent of probation if that was possible I was all of that was possible if they had if they had them if the court had imposed it a suspended sentence that was also anticipated in the plea agreement and so the defendant then would have been required to return to the United States to serve an actual jail sentence because it did not credit suspended sentences okay okay the next I was going to ask you in relation to international cartels as their air cargo one now and that's a little bit different as I can have a complicated history as you know it was quite success in the states I think the investigation but I can't do that off the rails do you mind maybe even an outline of that case investigation well that we convicted 21 companies and about two dozen individuals in that investigation and obtained over 1.8 billion dollar and fines and a number of significant jail sentences it was that's that's the largest cartel that we've ever investigated in terms of the number of players and that were prosecuted and the amount of fines it was very successful and I think it's a cartel that had a great impact on not just our economy but economies around the world or trade in you mentioned I think you were alluding to the the OFT's case obviously when we brought like I shouldn't keep saying obviously when we brought the our case against BA it was done simultaneous with the UK's also announcement that BA had resolved its liability and in the UK as well yeah they were simultaneously announced that was that was a milestone in itself the prosecution I'm aware that would aware of in the OFT and with the BA executives I know resulted in a voluntary dismissal I think this was obviously a setback for the OFT it was through the prosecution over the weekend it was like a they were given time to think about it there's a problem with the case came in Monday morning we're not proceeding we're not friends yeah yeah but I mean how does that impact on cooperation or does it have an impact on subsequent investigations or something that's got the cause you pause for thought but how you do your work into with internet international cooperation in mind no I mean that that individual development did not impact us but I mean if you international cooperation you have to take the good with the bad and when you have whenever you have a lot of jurisdictions all trying to play in the same sandbox it can get crowded because individual you know it's natural that every well first of all every jurisdiction needs to look out for its dangerous if it's constituents within it's going to want to have access itself to documents into witnesses and so you are gonna have situations where witnesses are being talked in different directions and you can also have situations where witnesses are being required to give multiple statements and multiple jurisdictions and to the extent that those statements can be discoverable to be in a little bit there could be contradictions in those statements and as I said it could get very crowded but I think clearly the benefits of cooperation outweigh whatever those whatever those challenges are you may be aware that we've had a number of jury trials in Ireland in relation to cartel or price-fixing arranged I'm not even sure apart from the states and Ireland how many jurisdictions in the world had jury trials you might know the answer and we've had three we won our first and we've had to defeat shall we say and subsequently we've had a lot of other convictions as well people feeding guilty and what is your own experience of jury trials and say to are they frequent or how does it pan out when you prosecute these cases do you often have jury trials well about 95% of the individuals and companies that are convicted in the United States are convicted short of a jury verdict so they have pled guilty to a court without exercising their right to a trial by jury so in that sense it's somewhat rare I think we had a typical year we may have three four trials in a year but this last year we prosecuted 90 cases with about 130 defendants so it's a relatively small we win we win more cases than we lose but we certainly the cases that go to trial as you would sort of expect with the odds that I just described are usually that you know the tough cases go to trial so we face our share of tough cases do you do any kind of research and on what juries understand in relation to actual cases like do they find these kind of cases complex or do you have to go into them would it would have you that we're going to keep the story simple how do you know that's that's the mantra you got to keep it simple but I mean I in any trial the challenges and this is often also can be an issue for the judges was the jury is to have the jury look at this as a crime and the defendant is a criminal and that can be that can be a challenge sometimes the individuals involved are portrayed as being upstanding citizens pillars of society and and the conduct is if it's perceived as being business as usual or something that we call no harm no foul you're going to be in trouble with that jury if they don't perceive the conduct is being harmful and something that they should care about and and that they should hold the individual accountable for okay we haven't been able to convey that message then we're probably not going to be successful do you then have specialist judges that deal only with antitrust no okay but prosecutors the actual lawyers prosecution our prosecutors are all and I trust prosecutors okay dedicated prosecutors you mentioned though that and most cases bargaining those form an important part of your prosecution process when you're coming to the deal with these cartels we don't like to call plea bargaining here carries a negative connotation here but yes plea settlements and plea agreements is part of the the u.s. system but the reason why I I mentioned plea bargaining is only because there's no bargaining of the charges only you what what a defendant can attain by accepting responsibility and cooperating is a favorable recommendation for linear treatment sentencing but there is no charge bargaining going on is all it got them yeah I the the market allocation customer allocation cases are much tougher to try than then bedragging I'm usually bedragging is the easiest price fixing next and market allocation but that's I don't know that's necessarily because it's harder to explain it is it's usually the conduct is more limited I mean if you have a if you have a customer allocation agreement in which you take everything east of Mississippi and I'll take everything west of Mississippi if it's working well they never need to communicate with them one another after that so there's very little policing or implementation evidence that we can use to show the existence of the agreement it's just the way it's business was always done if you have something like that and you can have a hard time proving the existence of the agreement so the allocation cases are tougher for that reason so if you then carefully pick those kind of cases so you maybe avoid going to trial or dealing as a criminal case maybe they're at the market allocation close allocation cases well as federal prosecutors we have to believe that we have a better than 50% chance of getting a jury to unanimously believe that they're in convict beyond a reasonable doubt so if we think we don't have the evidence we can't bring the case and we can't pursue a plea agreement or make some sweetheart deal just because we think it's a tough case so I don't know that it tough if we have a tough case that we don't think we could satisfy our evidentiary for you just as a side our first trial was a price-fixing case and all our plea as supposed to be a case where it was pleaded out were price-fixing but the first jury trial we lost was in fact a market share in cost allocation case and we're looking at this going what lessons do we learn from that it seems again it's just no they get the message the message of prices price-fixing bad but this market sharing thing kind of a bit more complex than the grasp so maybe it's an experience that we could have learned from yourself in advance and I just want to go on if I can you know I've heard a comment made more than once recently that the Department of Justice is becoming a little bit and maybe a little bit too reliant on leniency on the immunity program and that maybe that this is having an impact on your ability to and investigate off your own bat in other words where you get complaints from Joe public or you do your own scoping or whatever that you really are maybe sitting back a little bit too much waiters community applicants come in they present the case to you and the job is done maybe I don't I said I'm insulting you now I guess but is there some truth in that or I mean how many of your cases are literally built on just an immunity from the first stop no I don't think that's I'm certain that the way I would perceive it that we're too reliant on the easy problems first of all we look at the leniency program is an investigative tool so in some ways it's maybe like saying you're too reliant on search warrants and we we do have a full arsenal of tools available to us when we do search warrants I just mentioned we work with the FBI we just talked about our ability to obtain wiretaps with the authority of a judge or even without the authority of a judge if we have an individual who's cooperating we can do what we call consensual monitoring we're able to take witness testimony compel before grand juries we have a lot of advantages that aren't necessarily available to other jurisdictions around the world but we still find that the leniency program has been more effective than all of those tools combined in terms of detecting cartel activity so it is to say that we are too reliant on it to me is sort of suggests defense talk this is a little bit about how it is how it is utilized but we also I don't know exactly what the percentage is but a huge proportion of our investigations are generated through our amnesty plus program now the amnesty plus program involves situations where we are investigating one crime and the one of the subjects of that investigation who is too late to get leniency on that product through its own investigation now determines that it's involved in a second completely unrelated conspiracy and brings that to us now if we are perceived as a credible investigative body there's no incentive to do that but of course we I hope it's our reputation I believe it's our reputation that that they're if the company doesn't go out and find this we will and in fact we do engage in what we call cartel profiling techniques we have our what we call our penalty plus program to provide incentives to companies to go out and find this before we do but we are on the lookout for this related conduct through the other investigative tools that we have so to the extent that companies are coming forward there I think it's it's it's an indication that we are being vigilant in going out and finding new conduct we're just providing incentives and hoping that the companies will bring it to us. What immunity can arise after investigation starts you may have an old mission of investigation you've already received complaints or a tip of you start investigation and at that stage maybe somebody might come forward to look I need to come in. That was one of the when we revised our program in 1993 one of the changes was to make leniency available even after investigation begins now you still have to meet the first condition which is you have to be the first so oftentimes if we when the company finds out that when a company or individual finds out they're under under investigation it may be because we already have a leniency applicant so it's not available but if we don't have a leniency applicant and our investigation hasn't progressed to the point where leniency is no longer not available because we're too far along in our investigation let's assume that we are sending out grand jury subpoenas conducting investigation if it's still available we will attach a copy of the leniency policy to subpoena and attorney can always ask us is leniency available if the answer is yes all of the targets then are subjects of the investigation will know that now they're in a race for it so it's usually doesn't take long before someone comes in if if everybody finds out simultaneously that they're all receiving the same invitation at the same time but then if you send a subpoena there's no leniency attached to us you know you're out of the race that's a case of maybe bringing scottan to you then he can do for me but anyway given the street we're on i'm going to ask you a question about a chap called naras it's a joke that the audience will know about but there's a presidential election going on the moment here in the country and one of the candidates is called naras lives with two doors open but the naras i'm thinking of is this gentleman in relation to this extradition saga with the with the uk which mind gives a background to that story i mean that's been going on for some time um yeah uh well you know it goes but you're right it does go back sometime um it just it just really came to an end though a week or two ago when supreme court finally said they wouldn't not hear any hear the appeal he appealed it all the way or tried to appeal it to the high court but they weren't willing to to hear his case but it began a long time ago um look uh i was saying uh eight years ago what i'll say now which is the conduct that was involved there was the most egregious obstruction that i've observed that i'm aware of in my 20 years and i say that because it involved mr norris was the ceo of a major international company uh his involvement in obstruction beyond his involvement in orchestrating a price-fixing conspiracy which is egregious as i've seen it involved the whole gamut of obstructive conduct it involved putting together a team of uh executives to destroy to search out and then destroy documents it involved creating false scripts that were submitted to the justice department to uh to um to try to mislead us in terms of what the nature of agreements were meetings that took place and it also involved approaching a competitor and providing them with a copy of the scripts in order to try to tamper with their testimony and get them to go along with uh supporting witnesses as well the new yes it was the it was the whole gamut um mr norris's subordinates uh who were directed to participate in this conduct decided to accept responsibility several of them traveled voluntarily back to the united states and served jail sentences for their involvement in this uh in this obstruction in the conduct mr norris decided to take another attack um he proclaimed his innocence uh he left his subordinates to hold the bag and um and uh tried to hold out in the uk and refused to return and uh take his case to a jury in it um as you know he was eventually he was extradited he was returned to the u.s. and after trial he was convicted and sentenced to 18 months um where he he now sits that's a kind of a light sentence when you think of what has happened and was this was a you know trigger one against speculating I suppose what did he get off light you think no I know I mean I don't I don't I think 18 months is a substantial sentence but uh I think his penalty was much greater than that I mean he's been living with this for 10 years his decision not to accept responsibility has meant that he has spent the last 10 years with this case had he accepted responsibility this is for not just his conduct but for the conduct of his subordinates he could have been living his last eight years or so in retirement instead uh he has uh he's still dealing with this he's still now sitting in jail and and frankly uh it may be that that's the the harshest part of this sentence what was 18 months before there was a obstruction or for his price-fixing you know he it was purely for the obstruction he was only allowed to be tried on the obstruction charges he was we were not permitted to try him on the price-fixing that seems a bit anomalous sorry ignoring what has happened yep please Nori Maki Nori Maki I was just going to ask you in relation to sentences yeah you referred there to that being a substantial sentence and I think he said earlier that sentences of 20 to 30 months were substantial as well and that was actually in brokerages of the competition laws so you would consider something around two years to be a substantial sentence prison sentence for breaches of the antitrust rules yeah our uh I mean we the maximum sentence under the antitrust laws was moved in 2004 from three years to ten years and so that's the maximum sentence and we have had some individuals who have received much longer sentences but do I believe that an 18 month jail sentence or 20 months or 24 months sentence is substantially heavy I mean I I think it's I think it's a heavy heavy price to pay for the conduct how's the increase in the sanction available to the courts being a direct correlation with actual increase I mean have you seen an increase in the amount of time you handled by court or are they reluctant to give longer sentences well our judges have have a good deal of discretion so I can't characterize all of them as acting uniformly but we have over time and by that I mean in over the last two decades have seen judges sentence with increasing severity in our cases and that's maybe been part of the education process in terms of seeing that the harm it has caused not just in antitrust cases but in other white collar crimes but uh the jail sentences have gone up and as you know I should say and I you know it's it's important people hear from the antitrust division and talk about the need for tough sanctions we've already talked about the fact that it's not the antitrust division that imposes sanctions and it's it's the judges that do and I mentioned that and of course it was our congress that decided that the sentences maximums that I just described and we're not harsh enough for individuals we we had a one million dollar statutory maximum fine in the 70s and then it moved to 10 million dollars about 20 years ago and now it moved a hundred million dollars in 2004 so we've seen you know two tenfold increases over the last couple decades and and that was congress not not the antitrust division that made that decision. Do you have any view though that the potential of such increased fine sanctions 10 years or substantial fines does that itself have a deterrent effect or is the fact of people being caught and receiving jail time which you know is it's a combination of the two the fact that people are going to prison that's working as a deterrent. Yeah I know I don't I don't think just having the law in the books is going to be enough to deter the conduct there has to be it there has to be that fear or risk of detection without that without those sort of headlines in the newspaper you need something in the wall street journal that says executive goes to jail for 18 months for price fixings that that's that's worth its weight in gold in terms of deterrence but just having something on the books there's you know you know from your work with the ICN I mean there are plenty of jurisdictions that have actually longer statutory maximum sentences than the United States but they're not being those statutes aren't being utilized and so they're not carrying the necessary deterrent impact because at the moment there's a new bill out a sanctions bill in relation to competition in law in Ireland and published very recently where the maximum sentence available is proposed to increase from five years to 10 years in indictment I think one of the reasons that this is being sent out is it's this idea that it's important for cartellists to know the severity of the sentence they can find they can receive but also sentence signals for the judiciary that look that's you know the intention here is to punish these wrongdoers not just me to find them but actually to punish them is that part of the purpose of that of that sanction as well in the States well yes I'm aware that in some jurisdictions for example you may have some offenses in which the statute if the statutory maximum is three years or less then presumably jail sentences actually are not to be imposed at all and so I have seen jurisdictions that are trying to get up to a certain minimum level so that judges will understand that it is actually the intention to utilize these sanctions as opposed to treating them as a second-class crime I don't like it are what we have something called wire fraud or mail fraud which is the type of you know fraud statutes they carry 20-year penalties an attempt to fix prices can be a violation of that statute so when congress was debating whether to raise the statutory maximum from three to ten years they knew that if you actually attempted to fix prices you could go to jail for 20 years but if you were actually successful you could only go to jail for three years that didn't make much sense so sometimes it's sometimes there you're right there is a that the level of the statutory maximum should and is meant to carry a signal in terms of how it should be perceived with respect to other crimes and that message is meant for the judiciary do you see any link between criminalizing cartel activity and maybe simply just treating it as an administrative type and infringing where it's maybe fines and the effectiveness of the deterrent so in other words is criminalization in your view the right way to go in relation to price reasons does it involve that element of wrongdoing kind of in the mind of the perpetrator that warrants the street as a criminal and therefore do you think likewise criminalizing it is the right road for deterrent purposes won't surprise you that the answer to that is yes but from my perspective I I have the opportunity to you know to talk to audiences like this outside of the United States and I and try to be careful not to be too preachy or come across as such because I do think that I do think that every jurisdiction is uniquely positioned to decide what is best for its own businesses and its consumers and what's best the United States will not necessarily be best in other jurisdictions I've just described it I mean we we put a lot of people in jail and there's obviously a societal cost of that and so another jurisdiction could make the decision that that's not how we don't want to treat these as crimes we don't we don't want to fill up our prisons with white-collar executives and that's not the road that is best for our our consumers and presumably they have elected officials that are looking out for the best interests of those consumers and if that's the decision they make then it's really one that I would respect and so you can have this healthy debate on what are what's what's the best road what what sanctions are most appropriate where I don't think there's any room for debate and is what actually is the most effective way to deter the conduct that's to me not up for for discussion the fact that they're stopping at your borders and staying out there exactly in my opinion the greatest deterrent is individual accountability and the risk of going to jail and so without that I think you're leaving the jurisdiction or its elected officials make a determination not to have criminal sanctions I respect that as long as there is an understanding that it does leave their economy and their consumers more vulnerable to cartel activity you know beyond it's not just I begin with individual accountability and the risk of prison sanctions is where I think the rubber hits the road under terms but but you also you mentioned criminal I mean just just the criminalization of it also carries a stigma if you sentence an individual and they have a criminal record a felony record in the United States you're not or even a company is risking being labeled as a criminal you're not going to get the same impact with an administrative sanction or administrative fine which you know some individuals actually might wear as a badge of honor you might be interested to know that on some of the sentences we've had in our own criminal cartel cases one of the biggest concerns of the individuals apart from possibly going to prison is that what our connections to the States does this mean I can't go to America anymore and it seems in fact that's a you know that's a major impact to these people that the fact is that I have a criminal record and there won't be the travel to the States now it's possibly a personal reason to want to go to America but also business yeah of course you have kind of arrangements with some jurisdictions whereby you know if you do come in maybe plead or whatever else they can even waive that kind of as an issue in future these kind of these bargains have been entered and passed so you want to mention that I mean it's one or two the international cartels have actually freely submitted themselves come into the States well this this goes back to the 90s after the 80m case that I mentioned in the mid 90s that was our first international case we had a string of them afterwards but at that point in time we you know we were trying to get access to foreign located documents and foreign located witnesses and if we could just get one of those individuals to accept responsibility and plead guilty and come to the United States and testify we were willing to promise a recommendation that we would not seek jail sentence that's what we were in the 90s and that was still not good enough to get anyone to return to the United States so we also because they were worried about the immigration consequences of pleading guilty and then being excluded from traveling into the United States for business or personal reasons so we went to the competition the immigration authorities and we entered into what was then and is still today a unique arrangement in which the immigration authorities would agree to pre adjudicate the immigration status of the individuals even before they plead guilty basically providing them with a promise that they wouldn't that their criminal conviction would not serve as a bar from entering and leaving the United States if they cooperated with the investigation so that ended up being a huge tool in terms of incentivizing foreign nationals to accept responsibility and voluntarily return to the United States to plead guilty now you know the rest of the story was as we became more effective in being able to build these cases and having a stronger hand in these negotiations by the time we got to the end of that decade by by 1999 we took this no jail deal off the table we said we'll continue to provide incentives for individuals including four nationals who have violated the U.S. Senate trust laws but would like to put this matter behind them but they will need to agree to plead guilty and now that we'll face the jail sentence and we also made clear that those jail sentences will be relatively short for now but we will steadily seek to increase the sentences over time because ultimately we are looking to create proportionality in our sentencing and in our vision over time will be that it sentences for equally culpable individuals should be the same regardless of nationality because the incentive courses for business business executives from outside the states who base themselves so much in the states make sure you're outside the states when this thing blows up because then you can cut a deal or you get a light sentence in a sense it's kind of eventually you're kind of working toward making sure these guys get this kind of similar kind of sanctions so well based as you would expect the justice department we would like to be perceived as having fair equitable and proportional policies which would treat everybody the same regardless of nationality the reality is is that an individual that's outside the United States has a strength in their negotiating position if we're not able to bring them back now obviously a case like eonores has been important in terms of diminishing that that concern as well as other policies I mean we now if you are if you violate the u.s. and i trust laws and you're outside of our borders uh we will seek to put you on it in a poll right notice watch for the purpose of tracking them tracking the movements of those international fugitives hopefully seeing them detained and extradited back to the United States so and does that use much of you actually flagged many suspects yes that's interesting right i mean i presume of you that means they may have traveled to arden for example otherwise and authorities here will be notifying true interpol that you know x individual has been true here and you're watching these guys and then actively looking to try to chase them down that's interesting right you mentioned and we are we discussed leniency in passing and the stult nielsen case has had an impact I think on leniency can you give an outline of that case and how it's impacted on the program well I don't know how many of you are familiar with the case but it's the only time and we have a leniency program that dates back to 1978 we revised it in 1993 this company came in and sought leniency I believe in 2002 and then had its leniency revoked by the Department of Justice so since 1992 well since 1978 or since 1993 it's the only company that we have revoked leniency for so it was obviously a significant in that regard because it's one of the kind case I think it would use up too much time to give you all the facts of the case but suffice to say the company had its leniency revoked because when it came forward the reason we found out about the case like everybody else we read the wall street journal and it talked about a general counsel that was suing its company it's his former employer alleging that he had detected a cartel he tried to put a stop to it and the conduct continued even after he discovered it and tried to put a stop to it so he had to resign from the company so as not to be perceived as a participant in the conspiracy and sued his former employer for constructive termination we read that and open investigation and quite promptly his employer came in and sought leniency we have a condition in our program that says when a company discovers the wrong doing it has to take prompt and effective action to terminate its involvement the way that 99.9 percent of the companies do that is report the conduct to us that's the best way the most surest way to meet that condition that you have put a stop to it is to come and tell the department of justice this company did not do that it did not come forward until some time after and again not until after the wall street journal reported on it we told the company that they could come into the program but if the if it turned out that the general counsel's allegations which they told us were mirrorless if it turned out that they were true that is it said that the conduct continued after he discovered it well they would not be eligible they assured us that the company had immediately ceased its involvement in the conspiracy afterwards had notified all of its co-conspirators that they were out and and our internal investigation would verify that so we provided them with a conditional leniency letter and then promptly found out had witnesses tell us that that had not been true that the whole thing had been a head fake and that the conduct had continued so they had their leniency revoked they challenged that decision in court a judge had an evidentiary hearing the judge determined that the conduct had been discovered but did not find the testimony of the government witnesses that had continued was credible and so reversed the department of justice decision to evoke the leniency and the company was the indictment that was levied against the company was dismissed it i would tell you that it's and i'd be interested in anyone here who has a has a different take or a different view it certainly hasn't heard our leniency program i mean that was in 2002 and we haven't seen the tailing off of leniency applications since then it's also not a situation that i would think well that we the stolt situation is not one frankly that many come that the companies find themselves in or frankly it's not one that i that i that i cared to comfort them about so again and what i'm talking about is what was uh undisputable is that the company discovered the conduct and decided not to immediately report it instead undisputably the individual who was in the top individual involved in the conduct actually was in charge of conducting the internal investigation and also not something that i would encourage and his second who was the point person in the car cartel was charged with meeting alone with co-conspirators to communicate that the company was withdrawing from the conspiracy in one-on-one meetings after that also not an effective way i would encourage in terms of withdrawing from the conspiracy so so to the extent that someone would look at what happened in that case and and be concerned that well if we discover the conduct and we don't put an end to it but we try to handle it the way that was handled and stole can i be sure the department of justice uh will still welcome us into the leniency program you know signals i'm not i'm not that concerned about that i would like to see now if a company instead discovers the conduct immediately reports the conduct you have nothing in common was stole and you have nothing to be concerned about a couple questions slowly not because it strikes me in relation to our own immunity program maybe i'm wrong on this but we do think slightly differently one this idea you know notifying how other conspirators and that would be a problem for us we would ask where possible that an immunity applicant takes effective steps to bring to an end they're involved in the cartel but please don't tell them or because of course if i was having to sort it out get up to speed anything we're looking for a relation to documents whatever else could well be destroyed that must be a concern for you that they actually went and spoke and told something well they did that before they ever came in absolutely oh yeah no no um yes it is a concern we don't um uh it's it's a concern in every case that uh particularly when when companies come in as they often deal with report ongoing conduct uh it's very important that that their application remain confidential so that we can utilize all of our covert investigative tools um we tell the company uh to make sure we want to know who is it in the company that is aware of the msd application we want to make sure that the company counsel communicates those individuals that we that their name was given to us as someone who is aware of the investigation uh we know exactly when they became aware of the investigation and should that individual have any communications that result in any obstructed conduct that not only will they lose their protection under the program but they will now face additional potential obstruction charges can you parse it then can you can the company still continue to get immunity and some selected say directors whilst directors that have them behaved badly whilst having you know you know applied they can be thrown out of the program uh yes that can happen if the company has done everything that it can to protect the integrity of our investigation um but notwithstanding that one of their individuals has decided to make a mess of it then then the company can still remain in good grace under our program and the individual can be carved out in subject to prosecution that actually happened in uh in the DRAM investigation. A second question sorry yeah just one round of agency I just wanted to ask um you've mentioned the number of times Scott people accepting responsibility I guess that's you know companies are in the visual saying yes you know confessing they're kind of giving the involvement in the crime here when applying for the agency so what principles they do that in order to get the agency at the very start of the program or true uh this has um been in progression over the last 20 years a development choice I think is good for the leniency program because it's good both for enforcers and for applicants this is the development of a marker system we are our message to companies and I just sort of conveyed in different terms a moment ago is you know run don't walk to the justice department as soon as you have a whiff of wrongdoing we want the company to come forward and report but we and we want them to do that before they've conducted their internal investigation so the marker for getting into the leniency program the evidentiary threshold especially for for if we don't have an investigation it's just about as low as it can be um frankly if you have any indication of any wrongdoing you want to come in and get a marker so that the company conduct can conduct an internal investigation they're going to be given that opportunity to do so and while they have that marker nobody can step in line ahead of them regardless of someone who comes in with a stack of documents and the road with everything with a bow on the top it's too late they're back in the line so uh you don't have to come in immediately with a corporate confession now what they want is a piece of paper though a letter from the justice department that converts conditional leniency and in order to give that letter they have to confess to a crime i mean the leniency program is only available for people who need it and it's only and they need it because they have committed the crime you can't come into the leniency program and say well uh our executives participated in meetings with their competitors in smoke filled rooms where prices were discussed and i could see why you might think that there was price fixing going on there it certainly looks bad none of our individuals will admit to it but we think you have plenty to work with that that's not going to get you into the program i mean either there's a corporate confession of wrongdoing and which the leniency program is there for or not so you can come in with with just this initial lead but in order to obtain the benefits of leniency there has to be a full admission of wrongdoing that could be a problem that's right i thought i was coming to one side but just struck me that it could be a problem where a company say due diligence has maybe bought out a competitor or whatever and discovers oh hold on something's happened here and they want to get in quickly before they obviously get it gets replaced in the queue but they themselves are not entirely sure what's happened so in a sense they may welcome into you looking for immunity but not necessarily agreeing like we don't know we've actually broken the law or not i don't know but that happens all the time and then it could be as they as they move and conduct their internal investigation and try to perfect their marker all right they may determine that there is not an antitrust violation and then they they exit and uh without they are able to exit the program without having admission of wrongdoing and quite often we our investigation gets closed right behind them and they're able to do that without being subject to civil lawsuits because we're not publicizing the fact that there's an investigation the whole matter is handled incompetentially and outside of the public and that that happens but that's not a irregular okay so that's right about this is a question it's on slightly long side of the law can we coach on that a little one of the uh I would like to think of the VA virgin case as as I sense it on the side of the waters um if there are a amount of skepticism towards tooling in to the matter things and then the process that's very long and certain circumstances um one of the things I'm noticing here in one of the more important programs of the competition authority and objects to assertions of legal privilege by immunity aprons uh has a concern about it um and uh I can understand as a prosecutor anything that gets in the way of an investigation in the view of this offensive and would you have the U.S. a U.S. review on that in terms of you're ensuring that your immunity program is sufficiently appealable on one hand keep it coming and you know a lot of people have said that the rights in that regard and on the other hand also ensuring that you have you know sufficient skepticism in that regard information and how you make that power well uh first of all I would caution anyone to uh against reaching any firm conclusions about the ability of the OFT or any other enforcer to obtain a conviction with the use of the linsee program based solely on the OFT case that was uh I understand why the OFT brought the prosecution but keep in mind that was a too firm conspiracy in which you know one company got linsee as well as all its executives to testify against the other company that is the rare case in fact you know uh this is the this is the worst case scenario you know for a litigation context and that frankly it's also the worst case scenario in many jurisdictions in terms of why a prosecutor would not want to confer linsee I remember going around when we were always talking to the jurisdictions about linsee and they said well what about the situation if it's a too firm conspiracy surely we can't give linsee to one company just to prosecute the other and I said well look then then don't do it but then make sure that your program says the linsee program applies to all violations of our competition act except for too firm conspiracies go ahead make that distinction as long as it's transparent and predictable so I I think they chose and were the toughest of circumstances a too firm conspiracy and you know had there been five members of the cartel and one was a cooperator against the other four I'm not sure you would have it carries the same dynamic with the jury we have always had to rely upon the cooperation insiders some of you were just immunized as opposed to pursuant to conditional linsee program and we've been able to obtain convictions so I I don't know that I'm not I don't know that I would I would hope that it wouldn't be the case that every case would be perceived the same way as OFT the same way as the VA case with respect to legal privilege there is a provision in the OFTs immunity program that requires companies to waive attorney attorney client privilege in certain circumstances in order to have met their obligations to cooperate that provision does not exist in our program we did not require companies to waive attorney client privilege in order to cooperate fully with our investigation now having said that we expect the companies to provide us for the full road map to to our to what they have discovered and to assist our investigation to give us the documents to point us to the witnesses to bring those individuals in to facilitate their cooperation and so forth if we ever were in a situation in which somebody's ability to cooperate fully was inhibited by legal privilege then the company would have a problem it would be the you know if the company said we would love to cooperate with you but we can't because the information that you need is protected by privilege that would be the company's problem not our problem you wouldn't get into the program then if you couldn't cooperate fully as a result of that privilege what we're not interested in though is having access to the interview notes that the attorney took the first time he spoke to the employees we're not it something i know that was conveyed and would be a case we're not interested in obtaining a copy of the investigative report which was provided to the board of directors that's not information that we take in our investigations we wouldn't ask for we wouldn't need it so do we respect attorney client privilege with respect to those types of materials yes we do but and it hasn't resulted in inhibiting our investigations does that answer your question i just struck me like before you asked what are questions the second question i was going to ask in relation to Stolt-Nielsen under the Irish University program an individual can apply so it doesn't absolutely have to be for example a corporate application an individual involved in in in a conspiracy might come forward where the company's not willing to and he may well benefit from unity in that case it seemed from if i'm right you had an individual who was a good citizen saw what was going on and told the company and eventually resigned was immunity available to him as an individual as opposed to the company or could he have done something else could he have just gone and reported i mean why didn't he come to you guys at an early stage well we do have an individual i can't really speak to his motivations but we do have an individual lancy program it is available to executives and they can come in and beat their company in it's uh it it frankly it's it's very effective because i think it helps spark the race i mean it doesn't get used nearly as often as the corporate lancy policy but i think it's very important to have so the companies understand they're not only in a race with their competitors but they can also be in a race with their own employees if they don't do the right thing so i think it has been an important part of the success of our corporate lancy policy a member of the team and the authority um had a question that i want i'm asked to put to you and i i'll try and do what so they can what methods of questioning are favored in relation to um well the first immunity and then second suspects i i think um not necessarily suggested you work them over and thing but um i i i i i take from that that um is for example uh arrest detention and questioning use as a as an investigative tool and again do you for example in relation to immunity witnesses do you record everything video and audio i just i mean is that the kind of way you go about it or well we don't we don't do arrest detention and questioning so at all no well because we uh that probably wouldn't get us very far we can't if we're gonna we can we have the ability to compel testimony but only by conferring immunity on the individual so we can um we can take people uh we can subpoena the individual require them to testify in front of a grand jury that process is uh not public and the individuals who appears is put under oath and subject to penalties of perjury for providing false information the individual can be compelled to testify but if they assert their fifth amendment right which of course yeah they're entitled to do then we can obtain a court order to require them to testify and thereby and and that can be a very important way to get to the truth the um in terms of the leniency program we do we we do things much different for example than i the european union does um because as i mentioned a moment ago in response to this gentleman's question what the company provides through the leniency program is a roadmap they provide us the documents and they point to the individuals who are involved in the conduct who can assist us in our investigation but it is the documents and the testimony that's the evidence not what the attorney said uh with the commission what they're looking for is a corporate confession and the corporate confession is evidence and so they used to want that corporate confession in writing and now they've adopted this paperless process in which you can speak into a microphone and make a corporate confession but in both both situations what the company lawyer says is evidence that's not the case in the united states so they're not interested in sitting down and talking to the actual participants they would like the company to provide that information and make a corporate confession so in that way the systems are quite different um but we will with cooperators we will sit down with the cooperators uh actually the immunity program is also helpful and to the extent that the individuals and their employers now the interests are aligned so they don't need separate counsel the corporation can represent the individuals they all have the same interest which is to tell us everything they know because they both benefit from that now if we're in a situation where the individual uh where leniency is not available we think there's an inherent conflict that exists between the individual and the company the company has the ability to improve its situation by providing uh cooperation against its executive the executive has the ability to improve his or her position by providing testimony in cooperation not just against the other competitors but also against his or her own employer and so there's inherent conflict that exists and an attorney cannot represent both the company and the individual uh and live up to his or her ethical obligations uh so that becomes sometimes a problem in our investigations and it sometimes requires us to then do our questioning in front of a grand jury where attorneys are not all right it just strikes you though that if you're compelling somebody who has i think maranda writes this right you know that uh against self-incrimination with you're then compelled into the court process to give evidence you can't be sure as to what evidence they're going to give because you don't have a statement of that i mean a winning witness up to that point and whenever the prosecutor not knowing exactly what they want to say surely the defense will be entitled to know in advance what this witness is proposed what evidences is proposed that witness will give so they can prepare the defense in the words if you're seeing this for the first time it's not going to undermine uh defense rights in it in a prosecution or it's done differently than that because it wouldn't happen here i mean you have to actually have the statement of evidence of what they're going to say given to the accused in advance so that this is what the witness is proposed to say in evidence well we uh yes if any statements so we've now moved ahead to the litigation stage if we're going to trial well an advance of trial actually actually the law only requires that the statements be provided uh no uh no later than after the witness testifies but before cross examination but we've moved well away from that and usually the statements are provided prior to trial sometimes well in advance of trial and yeah any witness statements have to be provided with her and that could be um that could be the statements that were given in front of a grand jury in other situations it may be a write-up of a of a statement an interview report sometimes has to be provided okay but uh witness statements are often made available what in your sorry sorry just just to be clear my guess is that you you would not know though before the witness testified before the grand jury what they're going to say would you well it would depend if we have someone who's cooperating with our investigation then we've probably sat down and interviewed that witness before the grand before their grand jury appearance before you tried to get a court order to yes yes no we would not know has that ever done far down here uh well that we obviously have some witnesses then who provide hospital testimony or whose testimony is not very neat because where it's you know like pulling teeth uh in front of the grand jury um sometimes we voluntarily put ourselves in that situation because we do not want to interview the witness in front of counsel who we think will help try to shape that testimony there may be reasons why we are concerned that the witness is not interested in telling the truth and so there may be some documents that we would like to show that witness for the first time in front of the grand jury because we're concerned that with more preparation they may finesse their testimony but we experience all different kinds of results in front of the grand jury scotsky i think here that's a question and it's just that we don't always accept that you know lawyerman or a couple of this is high behind the women who just need to know that what they have so it's not with this perspective and my question just about what Matthew has said in relation to markers and we have a mark on the system as well under your agency program do you have a set time limit by which applicants must confess to a marker or is it under discretion it's at our discretion and i in my opinion fixed time periods are counterproductive for the competition enforcer it's often the department of justice that wants to continue to extend the marker process because we're not quite satisfied that we've received a full corporate confession and we want the company to go back and do some more homework in order to perfect their marker so we always have a finite marker period so we will if a company comes in and wants to conduct an internal investigation and it has an initial lead but it has a lot of work to do maybe it has to travel abroad in order to conduct interviews we'll give the company say 30 days to conduct that investigation we expect the company to remain in close contact with us we want to know the not just we want to know what the game plan is we want as i said we want to know who they're going to be talking to we want to know who the circle of individuals are that are going to be aware of the application and we're going to need to be convinced the company is moving in good faith moving with due diligence to perfect its marker if at the end of this finite marker period they have demonstrated both good faith good faith and diligence but they need more time we think they need more time then we will roll call rolling over roll it over for another fixed period of time so it's never indefinite and you know sometimes we have two three four marker periods that are rolled over if the company continues to conduct its internal investigation if we thought the company was dragging its feet if we thought the company was not moving in good faith forward in good faith then we could revoke the marker on that basis but it's not usually does not come to that i have all Gerald Strauss tells me that traditionally bargaining seems to be an important element or a background element in your the success of your agency program and i just wanted to point the center to judge and scrutinize this to be the period i've done with the acronym and when the marker comes before the judge yes so plea agreements and settlements are an important part our leniency agreements never go in front of a judge because there is no criminal charge and so the leniency program is outside of judicial scrutiny when it comes to plea agreements with individuals and companies who who reach agreements with the Department of Justice there's two types of plea agreements in our system and they're the shorthand reference to them are b agreements and c agreements we do a lot of c agreements in international cases because a c agreement is a type of agreement in which the united states enters into an agreement with the defendant the agreement calls for there's a joint recommendation as to what the appropriate sentence is when it comes to the judge the judge is free to accept or reject the agreement that was reached between the parties but cannot modify it so if the judge does not like the sentence he or she can say i'm not going to impose it in which case the parties can rip up the agreement and start over that's favored in our international cases particularly with individuals for nationals because they would like certainty in terms of what their sense is going to be oftentimes they're facing a 10-year statutory maximum under our sentence and guidelines the sentences would be much stiffer than what they've agreed to because we've taken into consideration their willingness to voluntarily surrender to the u.s. jurisdiction but they want to make sure that the judge isn't going to sentence them to something longer and so they want to see agreement the other some judges won't accept the agreements or in some cases anyways we use b agreements and a b agreement is can also include a jointly recommended sentence but the parties understand before the agreement is accepted that the judge isn't by no way bound by that recommendation and can sentence how the judge sees fit we have we have a very independent judiciary i hear many times talking abroad about how settlements won't work because their judges are very independent i can assure you our judges also have an independent streak but i think in antitrust cases and it's probably true of white color crime cases they know the defendants are well represented they're well funded and they're well represented and concerns that they may have about whether or not a defendant has been adequately represented and whether or not this truly represents a knowing voluntary disposition are usually dispensed with quite quickly and so our judges quite often and i hope they feel the same way about the Department of Justice that we looked up for the interest of our constituents and with with high frequency accept the recommendations of the parties in our cases i have just one final question myself scott and it's um i suppose in your opinion what you see as being the optimal enforcement model for cartel enforcement and i suppose speaking from our own perspective we would certainly agree in our that criminal enforcement is the right way to go in relation to cartel enforcement and we were at one point think almost unique in in europe and it's beginning to grow a little bit but your own view and what is the optimal way to go about cartel enforcement what's your own well i i think i've i've i've spoken to the sanctions part of this already and i i told you that i uh when i when i was discussing that my views on criminalization and why it may not be optimal in every jurisdiction because because of cultural institutional and morals of different jurisdictions could come out differently on those issues so i won't i won't repeat that that part of it i do think that i think we certainly have advantages in our system that we have a competition authority and a prosecuting authority that are one in the same i think that if you don't have that then you really do need dedicated competition prosecutors and this is where i see a lot of jurisdictions falling down is that they don't have a justice ministry that has dedicated competition enforcers and they don't have a com they don't have with the separation they have lack of coordination in terms of the administration of the leniency program and that's why you see a lot of competition enforcers particularly competition enforcers that have the ability to levy administrative sanctions even though it's also a crime that could be prosecuted by prosecutors where the criminal sanctuaries are not being utilized and the competition enforcers are not seeking to have them utilized because there's a bit of a turf battle or at least there's there's not a head and glove symmetry that exists between the two enforcers so if there is going to be criminal sanctions then there has to be a respect from the prosecutors of the leniency program there has to be a great deal of coordination and i think there has to be some specialization on the justice side as well okay i don't have any more questions from from the audience also on the corner john and adi as for fun long cases uh well yeah we well first of all we um i guess we give them the greatest assistance of all we detect the crime to begin with and number one and then we do and when we get a conviction we we give them also the the benefit of prima facia liability in their cases so in the united states if you are convicted of an antitrust offense that conviction establishes prima facia liability in the civil action and so liability is no longer an issue the question is what the damages are going to be um that's different here by the way even if you've got a conviction you still have to prove from the from the start again in a follow-on civil case here at present although there's a provision being brought about in our new competition amendment bill which is just published that will hopefully address that problem sorry i didn't mean to touch it no no no yeah but so those are the sorts of head starts that are provided but we we don't then turn around and when we're done with our case hand over our investigative file there's obviously the lenacy program for example uh we we promote and respect confidentiality for lenacy applicants so we're not handing over information that's provided by a lenacy applicant to anyone whether it's a private plaintiff bar or the average competition authority or uh enforcers in the u.s we try to it's an important part of the assurances that are provided to lenacy applicants but um the there are significant advantages that are provided to private plaintiffs in the united states that i'm aware are not available here i'm not sure perhaps but the gentleman's i'm kidding you by the way excuse me i'm speaking about the um there's that if i recall correct there's a statute uh if by single damages it's close to double damages if you cooperate and you provide the file to um to the follow-on action then when we get to the damages so it's called acpera and uh it was another way to try to incentivize cooperation through our lenacy program uh as you may be aware if you violate the antitrust laws you have this prima facie liability if you're convicted and then you face in a civil action that the possible treble damages which is triple damages plus joint several liability for triple damages across the entire conspiracy that's what a normal conspirator would face if you are an applicant and good standing with our uh msd applicant and good standing with the partner of justice and you cooperate with the plaintiffs it's not us providing the file to the plaintiffs but if the msd applicant cooperates with the victims then the msd applicant can be uh take advantage of the statute and they see their then their exposure reduced from triple damages to single damages and then there's the elimination of joint several liabilities so they're only responsible for single damages which which actually brings them back to what they're required under our program is to make restitution that's also a requirement of our program you have to make restitution you have to make the victims whole for your own conduct and so now there's that equivalency are they responsible for only the clusters that bought from them in other words because of course in a cartel if um if i bought all my stuff my product from you you might be gone i'm still entitled to sue all the members of the cartel even if i haven't bought from them but that's actually an advantage then for that party i just wanted to say folks um we have actually went over time unless there's a really pressing question probably should bring things to an end um i'd like to thank scott for uh making his making a fantastic effort to be here especially today for for uh for this seminar alone he lived with him he's flown in for this he's leaving immediately almost immediately to the airport to go out again uh although there's an aba conference on for the week in in in dublin uh he hasn't been here for that purpose at all came especially for this at this event thank you very much scott i'm also thank you to the ia for organizing today's event and of course to you all for coming along and for your questions scott havin thank you very much