Govt plans 'leniency plus' regime for strict probe into cartels: Report

The central government is planning to introduce a "leniency plus" programme in a bid to encourage companies, under investigation for one cartel, to report other cartels that are not known to the CCI

The central government is planning to introduce a “leniency plus” programme in a bid to encourage companies, under investigation for one cartel, to report other cartels that are not known to the competition regulator, BusinessLine reported on Monday.

The “leniency plus” programme — a new cartel detecting tool — under the recent Competition (Amendment) Bill 2022 was introduced in the Lok Sabha during the recently concluded Monsoon Session, Competition Commission of India (CCI)'s Chairperson, Ashok Kumar Gupta told BusinessLine.

“Our experience of enforcing leniency regime has been encouraging so far and has helped CCI in uncovering cartels through this route. The proposed framework of leniency plus would further incentivise applicants to come forward with disclosures regarding multiple cartels, thereby enabling CCI to save time and resources on cartels investigation. This will result in faster market corrections”, the agency chairman told BusinessLine.

The regime is already recognised in other nations, namely the UK, US, Singapore and Brazil.

According to the current Competition Act, 2002, the leniency programme allows firms to give sufficient information about a cartel in which the company has participated to get partial immunity from penalty. This helps CCI officials to discover secret cartels and get insider proof of the infringement. 

However, with the introduction of the proposed “Leniency Plus” programme, a cartel, which is cooperating with CCI for leniency, to get additional reduction in penalty, can disclose the the existence of another cartel in an unrelated market, the news report stated. 

The programme is aimed at attracting leniency applications by encouraging companies already under investigation for one cartel to report other cartels unknown to the CCI. 

This will help in the reduction of the penalty to the person in the first cartel for disclosing the information, without prejudice to the company obtaining lesser penalty regarding the newly disclosed cartel, the news report said.