Internal Antitrust Reports: The Two 120-Day Rules and the Race to Disclose

Antitrust whistleblower internal reporting involves two different 120-day rules, with separate questions about your role and the date of your report. If you have already raised a concern about rigged bids or shared prices inside your company, your role, the information you supplied and what happened afterward all matter.

The Antitrust Division and U.S. Postal Service reward program rests on an agreement between the agencies. It concerns eligible individuals who provide original, voluntary information about qualifying criminal conduct, with identifiable harm to the Postal Service. Its presumptive reward range is 15% to 30% of the qualifying recovery. When multiple whistleblowers receive awards, they share that total.

An internal report can therefore matter in more than one way. It can tell the business about the conduct, supply information for an investigation and affect how the reward program treats the employee’s disclosure. Those are different questions, even when they begin with the same email.

The Compliance Officer Original Information Exception

The compliance officer original information exception raises a specific antitrust reward question for someone who learned of misconduct through management, compliance or audit work. We review the first 120-day rule with you in light of that role.

That distinction matters if a pricing concern reached you through an internal complaint or an audit. We examine your role, how the information reached you, whom you notified and when to assess whether the exception applies.

We also review how the agreement treats information obtained through outside investigations and public-accounting work.

Questions about privilege and access to company files belong in that review with our whistleblower experts and antitrust whistleblower lawyers. We address them alongside the reporting history and the underlying conduct.

When an Internal Antitrust Report Keeps Its Date

We assess internal antitrust report date relation back under the second 120-day rule with you and the appropriate antitrust whistleblower lawyers.

We work through the reporting history with you, including any internal investigation or company disclosure.

Justice Department Antitrust Rewards and an Internal Compliance Report

An internal compliance report can raise both 120-day questions about an antitrust reward and separate questions about the company’s disclosure. The company’s interest in reporting a cartel and the employee’s interest in a reward follow different programs.

We examine the company’s reporting history under the Antitrust Division’s leniency policy alongside your account of the conduct.

Voluntariness under the reward agreement belongs in that review of your circumstances.

For us, the company’s reporting history and the individual’s reporting history belong beside each other. A company investigation may explain when management learned about the conduct. A company disclosure may explain when the government learned about it. Neither tells the whole story of what an employee knew and contributed.

If your own involvement, anonymity or retaliation is part of the concern, we address it with you and the appropriate antitrust whistleblower lawyers. Those questions belong in a conversation about your circumstances.

What Qualifies as a Whistleblower Complaint?

A useful antitrust whistleblower complaint connects the people involved, the conduct, the market, the dates and the supporting communications. For an internal reporter, it also matters what you knew yourself and how that knowledge entered the company’s investigation.

The reward agreement recognizes independent knowledge and qualifying independent analysis. It requires truthful, complete information and addresses what the designated agencies already knew, as well as information derived from public proceedings, reports or news.

The commercial facts give the report its substance. In a bidding business, an agreement about who will win connects to the offers that customers actually receive. In an auction business, shared bid limits connect to the prices offered and the inventory acquired. An insider may understand the instruction behind a transaction that looks ordinary when viewed alone.

We work from that connection: what the participants agreed, how the business carried it out and what the records show. Products, services, communications and competitive effects all belong in the account.

What Is the Role of Whistleblowers in Bid Rigging Cases?

Whistleblowers can bring hidden coordination to an investigator’s attention. Their account can connect the agreement inside the business to the bids visible outside it.

Bid Rigging in Public Procurement, a 2024 thesis at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, describes the detection problem in its examination of Greek public procurement:

The thesis discusses concealed agreements, bid rotation and artificially inflated prices. Its observation helps explain the value of an internal report: someone inside the business may be able to explain the arrangement behind the offers.

EBLOCK’s Acquisition Did Not End the Auction Scheme

The EBLOCK chronology separates acquisition without knowledge from later discovery and remediation, facts to distinguish from a reporter’s own internal-reporting dates.

Under its criminal deferred prosecution agreement, EBLOCK admitted that executives learned about the conduct in 2021. That company knowledge does not establish a reporter’s date under either 120-day rule.

The January 2026 EBLOCK award was $1 million, but its announcement does not establish that every internal report preserves eligibility.

For someone familiar with auction operations, the admitted conduct points to bid limits, access to confidential bidding data, software behavior and the division of profits. We would examine how those records fit the account you can give.

When the Government Paid the Rigged Price

A cartel report can also concern false claims for government payment. The South Korean military-fuel cases show why the customer and the bills matter alongside the agreement among competitors.

The S-Oil fuel allegations show why a bid below cartel targets could still overcharge the buyer, without establishing when a different employee reported it.

The apparent discount still depended on knowing what the supposed competitors would do. An employee familiar with those bids could explain something the winning price alone would not reveal.

The military-fuel resolutions also included a whistleblower’s False Claims Act case. Where collusion produces qualifying false claims or false statements involving government payment, we examine that connection as part of the case. A whistleblower case under the False Claims Act can pay 15% to 30% of what the government recovers.

Your Report Deserves Its Own Advocate

Bring the sequence of internal reports and company responses to our whistleblower experts so we can work through the evidence and reporting dates with you.