Cartel deterrence and settlements: the Brazilian experience

Settlements are an important part of a program of cartel deterrence, particularly when the likelihood of conviction and the litigation costs are higher. This type of negotiated procedure to reach finality is in essence complementary to the fully adversarial procedures associated to the trial by the administrative or judicial courts, and to other investigative instruments, such as the leniency agreement. The Brazilian experience provides some insights about the different models of direct settlement in cartel cases and the complex interaction among settlements, leniency agreements, and trial outcome. First, there is leeway for the complementary models of settlements, the first oriented mainly to increasing the likelihood of detection, and the second oriented to saving social costs of litigation. Second, the concern with the preservation of the demand for leniency agreements led the competition authority to restrict the use of settlements, which are effectively designed for the defendants that are likely guilty and give higher value to finality. The recent experience illustrates that the current settlement policy has not caused any adverse effect on leniency agreements, while reducing litigation costs and granting finality in some cases.

Uma análise da jurisprudência do CADE acerca dos cartéis na revenda de combustíveis

Esta monografia analisa as decisões do Conselho Administrativo de Defesa Econômica (Cade) acerca dos cartéis no setor de revenda de combustíveis, com o objetivo de identificar as características do referido setor que propiciam a formação de cartel, bem como verificar as provas utilizadas como fundamento nas decisões e a participação da Agência Nacional do Petróleo, Gás Natural e Combustível (ANP) na defesa da concorrência no setor. Para introduzir o tema, foram apresentados alguns conceitos relevantes, como “cartel”, “acordo de leniência”, e “termo de compromisso de cessação de conduta”. Em seguida, de modo a delimitar a competência de cada um dos órgãos atuantes no setor, foi realizada uma análise da divisão de competências entre o Cade e a ANP. Dentre os resultados obtidos através de pesquisa processual, com o objetivo de levantar os Processos Administrativos levados a julgamento perante o Cade, foi destacada e aprofundada a análise da participação de Sindicatos como sendo o principal agente na formação de cartéis envolvendo a revenda de combustíveis, os tipos de provas utilizadas nas decisões do órgão antitruste e a valoração dos estudos econômicos realizados pela ANP. A conclusão deste estudo demonstra que os altos números de denúncias envolvendo a prática de cartel no setor são fundadas em indícios insuficientes para uma possível condenação, pois o Cade tem decidido tais casos com base em estudos especializados e provas capazes de comprovar efetivamente a ocorrência de cartel.

A extensão dos efeitos da celebração de Acordo de Leniência com o CADE perante a administração pública

Através do presente trabalho, buscar-se-á analisar os efeitos e a extensão dos benefícios conferidos com a celebração do acordo de leniência com o Conselho Administrativo de Defesa Econômica (“CADE”), principalmente no que se refere à garantia de imunidade quanto às sanções administrativas. Nesse contexto, o presente trabalho procurará verificar se a celebração do acordo de leniência com o CADE extingue a ação punitiva da Administração Pública, ou seja, se nenhum outro ente da Administração Pública direta e indireta pode aplicar qualquer sanção administrativa à empresa leniente. Em outras palavras, se a imunidade prevista na Lei nº 12.529/2011 é restrita ao âmbito do CADE ou engloba toda a Administração Pública. Esse estudo revela-se importante, pois a possibilidade de outro órgão, também integrante da Administração pública, aplicar sanções administrativas à empresa leniente, violaria o sistema punitivo da Administração Pública, visto que o mesmo deve ser analisado e interpretado de maneira uniforme e interligada, além dos incentivos para a celebração do citado acordo de leniência serem reduzidos significativamente, caso outros órgãos da Administração Pública possam aplicar sanções administrativas, como, por exemplo, a declaração de inidoneidade. Portanto, a análise que será desenvolvida neste trabalho de conclusão de curso envolverá institutos e discussões presentes no Direito Administrativo e também no Direito Concorrencial Brasileiro, especificamente no que se refere aos benefícios garantidos com a celebração do acordo de leniência, instituto que foi criado para combater as práticas anticompetitivas colusivas.

Os limites formais para a celebração do acordo de leniência (Lei 12.846/13) em face das garantias do particular

O presente trabalho apresenta um estudo sobre a recente Lei n. 12.846/13, em especial sobre o instituto do acordo de leniência, buscando estabelecer um marco para a celebração desses ajustes tendo em vista os direitos e garantias estabelecidos pela Constituição da República Federativa do Brasil de 1988. Inicialmente, aborda-se as intensas mudanças promovidas no Estado moderno e no direito sancionador de forma geral, questiona-se, em seguida, a existência de um núcleo comum entre o direito penal e o direito administrativo sancionador. Busca-se, por fim, propor soluções para maximizar a eficácia do sistema de controle e sanção da Lei n. 12.846/13, tendo em vista a necessidade de se harmonizar a Regulação Pública com a segurança jurídica e os direitos constitucionais da pessoa jurídica investigada, em especial quando ela celebra o acordo de leniência.

Leniency (Amnesty) Plus: A Building Block or a Trojan Horse?

Leniency (amnesty) plus is one of the tools used in the fight against anticompetitive agreements. It allows a cartelist who did not manage to secure complete immunity under general leniency, to secure an additional reduction of sanctions in exchange for cooperation with the authorities with respect to operation of another prohibited agreement on an unrelated market. The instrument was developed in the United States and, in recent years, it was introduced in a number of jurisdictions. This article contextualises the operation of and rationale behind leniency plus, forewarning about its potential procollusive effects and the possibility of its strategic (mis)use by cartelists. It discusses theoretical, moral, and systemic (deterrence-related) problems surrounding this tool. It also provides a comparison of leniency plus in eleven jurisdictions, identifying common design flaws. This piece argues that leniency plus tends to be a problematic and poorly transplanted US legal innovation. Policy-makers considering its introduction should analyse it in light of institutional limits and local realities. Some of the regimes which already introduced it would be better off abandoning it.

Security of Two-Party Identity-Based Key Agreement

Identity-based cryptography has become extremely fashionable in the last few years. As a consequence many proposals for identity-based key establishment have emerged, the majority in the two party case. We survey the currently proposed protocols of this type, examining their security and efficiency. Problems with some published protocols are noted.

Causes of injuries resulting in hospitalisation in Australia : assessing coder agreement on external causes

Objective: To assess extent of coder agreement for external causes of injury using ICD-10-AM for injury-related hospitalisations in Australian public hospitals. Methods: A random sample of 4850 discharges from 2002 to 2004 was obtained from a stratified random sample of 50 hospitals across four states in Australia. On-site medical record reviews were conducted and external cause codes were assigned blinded to the original coded data. Code agreement levels were grouped into the following agreement categories: block level, 3-character level, 4-character level, 5th-character level, and complete code level. Results: At a broad block level, code agreement was found in over 90% of cases for most mechanisms (eg, transport, fall). Percentage disagreement was 26.0% at the 3-character level; agreement for the complete external cause code was 67.6%. For activity codes, the percentage of disagreement at the 3-character level was 7.3% and agreement for the complete activity code was 68.0%. For place of occurrence codes, the percentage of disagreement at the 4-character level was 22.0%; agreement for the complete place code was 75.4%. Conclusions: With 68% agreement for complete codes and 74% agreement for 3-character codes, as well as variability in agreement levels across different code blocks, place and activity codes, researchers need to be aware of the reliability of their specific data of interest when they wish to undertake trend analyses or case selection for specific causes of interest.

Strongly Secure Certificateless Key Agreement

We introduce a formal model for certificateless authenticated key exchange (CL-AKE) protocols. Contrary to what might be expected, we show that the natural combination of an ID-based AKE protocol with a public key based AKE protocol cannot provide strong security. We provide the first one-round CL-AKE scheme proven secure in the random oracle model. We introduce two variants of the Diffie-Hellman trapdoor the introduced by \cite{DBLP:conf/eurocrypt/CashKS08}. The proposed key agreement scheme is secure as long as each party has at least one uncompromised secret. Thus, our scheme is secure even if the key generation centre learns the ephemeral secrets of both parties.

Certificateless key agreement in the standard model

We show how to construct a certificateless key agreement protocol from the certificateless key encapsulation mechanism introduced by \cite{lippold-ICISC_2009} in ICISC 2009 using the \cite{DBLP:conf/acisp/BoydCNP08} protocol from ACISP 2008. We introduce the Canetti-Krawczyk (CK) model for certificateless cryptography, give security notions for Type I and Type II adversaries in the CK model, and highlight the differences to the existing e$^2$CK model discussed by \cite{DBLP:conf/pairing/LippoldBN09}. The resulting CK model is more relaxed thus giving more power to the adversary than the original CK model.