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90 A.B.A. J. 55 (2004)
Antitrust American Style

handle is hein.journals/abaj90 and id is 303 raw text is: xni'rus American Style Prosecutors Fear Their Cartel-Busting Efforts Will Fizzle if U.S. Courts Are Opened to Global Price-Fixing Litigation JOHN GIBEAUT EBSTER'S DICTIONARY HARDLY CON- tained enough superlatives for Jus- tice Department officials in May 1999 when they announced guilty pleas by the leaders of an international cartel that for nearly a decade had raked in billions of dollars by globally fixing the prices of vitamins. The vitamin cartel is the most pervasive and harm- ful criminal antitrust conspiracy ever uncovered, declared then-Antitrust Division chief Joel I. Klein. The criminal conduct of these companies hurt the pocketbook of virtually every American consumer-anyone who took a vitamin, drank a glass of milk or had a bowl of cereal. Pleading guilty were Swiss-based . Hoffman-La Roche Ltd., the world's largest vitamin manufacturer, and the German company BASF AG, the world's No. 2 producer. The plea cost Hoffman La-Roche a $500 million fine, the largest the Justice Department has ever obtained in a criminal case. BASF paid a $225 million penalty for its role, enough for second place on the all-time antitrust list. By late 2003, the criminal fine tally stood at nearly $1 bil- lion from a dozen corporate defendants and 13 individuals. And for the first time, a European national willfully submitted to U.S. jurisdiction in an antitrust case. Swiss citizen Kuno Sommer, Hoffman- La Roche's former marketing director, pleaded guilty, paid a $100,000 fine and spent four months in a federal prison. By the end of last year, the remaining individuals also had gone to prison or were on their way. Some 75 spin-off private civil cases in federal court also have collec- tively settled for more than $2 billion, while state antitrust actions con- tinue. Foreign governments, including the European Union, Canada and Australia, have levied close to another $1 billion in fines against cartel members. Private suits for damages are under way in Australia, John Gibeaut is a senior writerfor the ABA Journal. His e-mail address is gibeauij@saff. abanel.otg. 4pri/ 2004 ABA JOURNAL ABA CONNECTION

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