Mexican Experience in Screens for Bid-Rigging

Carlos Mena-Labarthe, Mar 13, 2012

It is a common place nowadays to say that antitrust authorities have relied significantly (or over relied) on leniency applications to detect cartels. Some intend this as a criticism; others intend this as recognition of the strategy. Indeed, evidence shows leniency has been the most useful tool for cartel detection and it has been one of the great success stories in cartel enforcement in various jurisdictions. It is without a doubt one of the most important institutional exports of the United States and it is only beginning to take off.

According to the International Competition Network, an international body devoted to competition law enforcement of which members represent national and multinational competition authorities, during the last two decades leniency programs were adopted in more than 50 jurisdictions. This has transformed the way competition law is enforced in those jurisdictions, but also how competition authorities work and coordinate with each other as they have created a race to disclose illegal conduct by the participants of the cartel, nationally and internationally. Nowadays, companies and their counsel coordinate leniency applications all around the world and competition authorities coordinate their enforcement.

In Mexico, as in other parts of the world, we regard leniency as one of the most important and useful tools for the detection and prosecution of cartels.

Leniency programs may have some effects that need to be ad