Senators Patrick Leahy and Chuck Grassley reintroduced previously stalled Criminal Antitrust Anti-Retaliation Act, which would extend whistleblower protections to employees who give federal prosecutors information in criminal antitrust investigations. The act would amend the Antitrust Criminal Penalties Enforcement and Reform Act (“ACPERA”), which provides leniency to guilty parties who report criminal cartels and cooperate with civil claimants. According to Leahy and Grassley, the whistleblower protections that would be created by this new bill are modeled on and are a natural extension of the Serbanes-Oxley financial accounting and corporate governance reform law. This latest bill stems from the Government Accountability Office’s July 2011 recommendation to extend ACPERA to protect not only the guilty parties, but the innocent third party informants by providing a civil remedy for those whistleblowers who experience retaliation for tipping off the DOJ to an antitrust violation.