“From Collusion to Competition” – Third Issue

Welcome to the third issue of the monthly cartel column “From Collusion to Competition.” Today we have two excellent articles from Mexico. The first reviews the latest ICN Cartel Working group meeting which took place earlier this month. Anti-cartel enforcers from all over the world met to discuss enforcement advances, and to better train themselves as investigators and prosecutors. This article also discusses Mexico’s valuable contribution to the group. Given that so many of the known cartels are international in nature, and that cartel arrangements are growing more sophisticated, coordination among competition authorities has become more important than ever for the deterrence and detection of collusion.INC Cartel Workshop 2012: Mexico’s Experience by Carlos Mena-Labarthe (Cartel Investigations & Interstate Commerce Division, Mexican Federal Competition Commission)

The second article reviews the history of cartel enforcement in Mexico with a special focus on last year’s amendments to the Federal Law of Economic Competition and the Federal Criminal Code. Those amendments are intended to achieve an effective cartel enforcement policy through the alignment of the incentives to improve the “carrot and stick” approach when dealing with collusion. Among other changes, the amendments criminalize cartel behavior and substantially increase fines. Though only time will tell whether this proves successful, the significant number of leniency applications following the adoption of these amendments is certainly encouraging.

Mexican Competition Law Aligned Incentives for Effective Cartel Enforcement by Omar Guerrero Rodríguez and Alan Ramirez Casazza (Barrera, Siqueiros y Torres Landa, S.C.)

I hope you enjoy learning about these developments in Mexican anti-cartel enforcement. Next month we will be learning about developments in anti-cartel enforcement from Portugal.