GW Law Team Proposes Legislation Tackling COVID-19 Antitrust Violations


June 1, 2020

whistleblower

F. Scott Kieff, the Fred C. Stevenson Research Professor of Law, and Michael DeJesus, a rising 2L, have partnered with the international law firm of Constantine Cannon to produce a statute focused on COVID-19 antitrust violations that would remove the legal, technological, and cultural barriers that prevent whistleblowers from connecting with oversight channels.

Responding to a call to action by the Global Legal Hackathon, in partnership with The Financial Times Innovative Lawyers Program, the GW Law team’s work includes a white papermodel statute, and highlights sheet and is sponsored by GW Law’s Center for Law, Economics and Finance (C-LEAF).

The global health crisis has increased the threat of antitrust violations, the white paper states, heightening the need for close government oversight. The Department of Justice has cautioned the business community against taking advantage of the COVID-19 crisis to violate antitrust laws, citing examples of anticompetitive conduct such as fixing prices for personal protective equipment, market allocation schemes, and anticompetitive agreements to modulate prices, output, or quality to harm markets and consumers.

With the growing concern over COVID-19-related antitrust violations, the team maintains that an antitrust whistleblower reward program is critical to supporting the DOJ’s goal of protecting against anticompetitive activity. They also contend that this program would pair well with other DOJ initiatives such as the recently created Procurement Collusion Strike Force and the Antitrust Division’s Leniency Program which incentivizes those who face criminal liability to come forward.

During the four-week challenge, the team drafted legislation known as the Antitrust Whistleblower Reward and Anti-Retaliatory Protection (WRAP) Act. The law would amend the Antitrust Criminal Penalty Enhancement and Reform Act of 2004 to include whistleblower rewards and anti-retaliation provisions in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the white paper, whistleblower bounty statutes are successful investigative and enforcement tools for rooting out fraud and corruption.

The GW Law project is one of over 170 submitted by more than 2,700 participants representing 225 organizations and more than 70 countries.