The potential for a flood of foreign suits and massive damages could deter companies from taking the amnesty, ending the justice department's No. 1 anti-cartel enforcement program.
Under that system, state-sponsored industry cartels programmed every aspect of economic life, from wages and working conditions to prices, production levels and product specifications.
Sound editing for a nonfiction program (single or multi-camera): "Cartel Land".
Ambassador Shapiro reminded me that the U.S. tried, unsuccessfully, to use Plan Colombia as a template for the Merida Initiative, a program to help Mexico fight drug cartels and organized crime.
But a new report from USA TODAY suggests that the precursor of this program was implemented almost a decade earlier — fighting drug cartels, not terrorism.
It showed up in a makeshift paper envelope adorned with the seal of the Knights Templar cartel and a short message, the news program said in its own report.
Representative Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, says subpoenas could be issued to the Justice Department this week over Operation Fast and Furious, a federal gunrunning program designed to track weapons sold to Mexican drug cartels.
In an amicus brief filed to the federal appeals court, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission argue that allowing foreign plaintiffs access to U.S courts could jeopardize an enforcement program that gives companies that are part of an illegal cartel amnesty from criminal prosecution in return for blowing the whistle on other cartel members.
Under the department's amnesty program, leniency can be extended only to the first member of a cartel to come forward and spill the beans.
The major TV networks' news programs have barely addressed copyright, because they are part of the cartel that wants more control.
