Cartels Are a Top Enforcement Priority — But What Are They?

In many respects, identifying cartels is nothing new, Jennifer Kennedy Gellie, a trade and investigations partner at Pillsbury and former chief of the Department of Justice’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section, told Global Investigations Review.

Gellie said that she views cartels as being defined more commonly by their inclusion on specific lists, such as those produced by the State Department or the Office of Foreign Assets Control.

“A designation is not confusing,” Gellie said, adding that many businesses already have strong compliance programs in place to identify the risks.

But when it comes to a working definition of cartels, there is a lack of precision. “Maybe the issue is less that there is no definition, and more that the definitions that exist are so broadly defined that a lot of things can be swept up in them,” she said.

Absent a designation, it can be difficult to spot a potential problem “as far as which entities and clients you should be divesting from,” Gellie said. “That’s hard; a designation is black and white.” However, it may be possible for companies to try and reverse engineer common traits across listed individuals and organizations to identify who could be listed next, she added.

The administration’s focus on cartels also isn’t entirely new, Gellie said.

“People have reps in this space, and they have a little bit of a playbook,” she said. “It’s now about taking that playbook and adapting it.”

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