The Ohio Attorney General’s Self-Disclosure Policy encourages vendors and others to self-report anti-competitive activities and offers lenient treatment to businesses that come forward to report wrongdoing that may violate antitrust laws.
Under the policy, the Attorney General’s Office will not criminally prosecute a business that reports its own antitrust violation, nor will it refer the matter for prosecution by another agency. The Attorney General’s Office also will not file a civil lawsuit for damages, penalties, or other remedies unless the business breaches the terms of the policy. In addition, the Attorney General’s Office will refrain from seeking to debar or otherwise prevent the company from doing business in Ohio.
To qualify for leniency under the Self-Disclosure Policy, a business must meet several important criteria:
· It must either disclose wrongdoing that the Attorney General’s Office did not know about or, if the Attorney General was already aware of the wrongdoing, the entity must be the first violator to come forward and provide information that supports a sustainable conviction or finding of liability that the Attorney General’s Office did not have before.
· The self-reporting business must have taken prompt action to stop its own illegal behavior and must fully and candidly disclose all relevant facts to the Attorney General’s Office.
· It must agree to cooperate with any further investigation of the matter, especially if the Attorney General’s Office is pursuing the company’s co-conspirators.
· It must not have been the ring leader of the conspiracy and must not have coerced any other business or individual to participate.
· Importantly, whenever possible the business must make restitution to injured parties, such as public entities that were victims of a bid-rigging or price-fixing conspiracy.
While several federal agencies have similar policies providing lenient treatment for businesses that self-report illegal activity, the Ohio Attorney General’s Office Self-Disclosure Policy appears to be the first of its kind among the nation’s state attorneys general. The policy also includes provisions covering consumer protection and charitable law violations.
The full text of the
Self-Disclosure Policy appears on the Ohio Attorney General’s website.