Oklahoma City’s Chesapeake Energy is among those firms mentioned in a report about the weekend expiration of the U.S. Antitrust Criminal Penalty Enhancement and Reform Act. The law lengthened criminal antitrust penalties and also offered companies such as Chesapeake to report price-fixing.
The law was enacted in 2004 and Chesapeake Energy is among those who have taken advantage of the law — which allows the first company to report a price-fixing conspiracy to pay actual damages to victims while other firms involved in the illegal scheme can be required to pay triple damages according to POLITICO.
Senate Judiciary Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) introduced a bill, S. 3377 (116), to permanently extend the law, but Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island put a hold on the measure until the Justice Department answered questions about its now-closed antitrust probe into automakers that adopted California’s fuel standards.
The Justice Department had concerns that BMW, Ford, Honda and Volkswagen illegally agreed among themselves to adopt California’s stronger emissions standards, the agency said last week in its first substantive explanation of the since-closed investigation.
In a letter to Whitehouse, Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs Stephen E. Boyd said the probe was “entirely reasonable” since an agreement between the carmakers would violate antitrust law.
“To be clear, the Division did not seek to investigate bilateral agreements between individual automakers and the State of California,” Boyd said in the Friday letter. “Rather, it undertook an investigation of whether competing automakers had entered an agreement with each other—a key distinction for antitrust purposes, even if the State of California were a participant.”
— The antitrust division opened the probe in September, around the same time the Trump administration moved to revoke California’s ability to set its own emissions standards. The investigation was blasted by Democrats and California politicians, who alleged the antitrust probe was politically motivated.
Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust Makan Delrahim defended the decision to open a probe in an op-ed in USA Today but later declined to answer questions about the investigation citing department policy against commenting on ongoing matters. DOJ officially closed the probe in February.
On Wednesday, Delrahim’s former chief of staff, John Elias, is expected to testify before the House Judiciary Committee about the car emissions probe.
Source: POLITICO