The Study On Leniency Program Under Anti-monopoly Law

Cartel is a conduct that affects market order badly and each country sets up a severe regulation on it. The hidden and diversity nature of cartel raises the difficulty of detecting by the enforcement authority. As a method to detect the cartel effectively, Leniency program provides a waiver or partial waiver to the cartel member who revealing the illegal conduct automatically and providing cooperation to the authority. The program encourages members in reporting the cartel to help the authority finding and dealing with the unlawful act and to increase the rate of solving cases. Since the United States carried out the Leniency program in 1978, most of the countries introduced this program in their competition law. In 2007, China's Anti-monopoly Law also studied from the United States'experience to introduce the Leniency program. However, the abstract and principled provision affects the enforcement of Leniency program. In more than one year after the enforcement of the Anti-monopoly Law, there is no case applying the Leniency program. This paper gives advices to perfect leniency program in procedural rules and substantial rules by learning by and comparing the advanced theory of the other countries.This paper comprises six parts and the main content of each chapter is as follows:Chapter one introduces the topic meaning, literature interview and researching method in order to make the readers have a general realization both of the paper's researching purpose and of the researching status adds the author's innovation.Chapter two discusses the reasonable of Leniency program from the moral theory, basis of principle of law and economics foundation. Revealing the cartel represents the applicant having the resipiscence consciousness. The waiver or partial waiver of punishment embodies the traditional moral theory of kindheartedness. By the means of Leniency program, the cost of enforcement is saved and the unlawful behavior destroying the market order is hindered. Besides, the right to fair deals and the right of option of the consumers are protected and the goal of realizing the whole social efficiency can be realized. As a rational economic man, cartel members always maximize their own benefits. The Prisoner'dilemma made by the Leniency program promotes the cartel members revealing each other.Chapter 3 analyzes the reasons of unsatisfied enforcement after the Anti-monopoly Law enacted. For one thing is the deficiency of the enforcement environment which embodies in the deficiency of criminal liability, the mild administrative responsibility and the obscure civil liability. For another is the deficiency of the procedural rules and substantial rules.Chapter 4 introduces the law making process and rules briefly. The introduction of the relative systems and experiences provides us a merit lesson to perfect China's Leniency program.Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 are the main points in this paper. By learning from the advanced legislation of other countries and combining our own legal environment, this paper provides the thoughts of building the Leniency program in a whole perspective from forming of legal liability, making clear the authority and perfecting the substantial and procedural rules.