In April 2014, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) completed extradition of the first defendant of an antitrust violation in the 124-year history of the Sherman Act of 1890. The extradition involved an Italian national extradited after his arrest in Germany in June 2013. The charge for which the Italian citizen was extradited was a single-count felony indictment alleging a violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1. The charge was related to a group of rubber manufacturers that had agreed on prices to be charged for flexible hose used to transfer oil between production platforms, oil tankers, and storage facilities (the Marine Hose Cartel), the standard description of a competitor’s agreement that DOJ would routinely charge as a criminal violation of Section 1. The DOJ stated in a press release announcing the completed extradition that this “first of its kind extradition on an antitrust charge … marks a significant step forward in our ongoing efforts to work with our international antitrust colleagues to ensure that those who subvert U.S. law are brought to justice.”
The single event of the extradition is not by itself a watershed event. Rather, it is an indication of developments in global antitrust enforcement, and most notably in international cooperation in global antitrust enforcement. Attorneys need to understand this extradition in order to provide informed advice to clients involved in the myriad multinational cartels now under investigation, and potential investigations in the not too distant future—particularly counsel for individual defendants in these multinational cartel investigations. This article summarizes the development of U.S. criminal antitrust enforcement that culminated in this extradition.
The Prior Reality
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