15 - The Absence of a Leniency Programme in Thai Competition Law

Summary

The chapter describes how the legislator discussed whether to incorporate a leniency programme in the Trade Competition Act of 2017 (2017 Act). It is argued that there was an initial desire to introduce a leniency programme. The leniency programme would be applied to the criminal sanctions that the bill prescribed for hard-core cartels, such as those involved in price fixing or bid rigging. However, the Office of the Attorney General objected with reasons that giving immunity from a sanction is the constitutional prerogative of the court. In order not to jeopardise the creation of a leniency programme, the drafting committee was willing to limit the lenient treatment to just a reduction in the sanction or to the cartels for which only an administrative sanction would apply. But these initiatives were not incorporated into the 2017 Act. Instead, the 2017 Act gave tremendous flexibility to the enforcement agency by only prescribing maximum sanctions. This might allow a similar result to a leniency programme to be achieved, albeit without a well-defined formal framework.