Lisa Phelan

Lisa M. Phelan is Chief of the Washington Criminal I Section (until recently National Criminal Enforcement Section) of the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice. Her office is located in Washington, DC. In that capacity, she supervises the investigation and litigation of major national and international criminal cartel and other white-collar crime cases. For example, her office in recent years has been responsible for the prosecution of the CEO and President of a pharmaceutical corporation, on charges of price fixing on the sale of drugs including antibiotics and those used to treat diabetes. Her office conducted the successful prosecution of more than 20 airlines, including British Airways and Korean Airlines, for price fixing on passenger and cargo rates, obtaining over $2 billion in criminal fines, as well as the prosecution of more than a dozen international freight forwarding corporations. During the past 5 years her office has lead prosecutions in the Auto Parts industry, including U.S. v Mitsubishi, U.S. v Panasonic and U.S. v Hitachi Corp., obtaining more than $2.9 billion in criminal fines and significant jail sentences for more than two dozen international executives. She led her team in the prosecution of Bristol Myers Squibb on false statement charges involving the heart drug Plavix. She led her prosecution team in an operation to arrest and prosecute eight international executives in the Marine Hose Industry on price fixing charges, and the prosecution of Bridgestone Corporation on antitrust and Federal Corrupt Practices Act charges. Her office is currently prosecuting ocean shipping companies and executives for collusion on rates for the shipment of cars, trucks and equipment all over the globe, and investigating widespread collusion in the pharmaceutical industry.

Ms. Phelan has led or supervised more than a dozen criminal antitrust trials, including several recent trials and convictions of coastal shipping executives, and bus company owners, in San Juan, Puerto Rico on Sherman Act charges. Ms. Phelan and her staff obtained the first-ever extradition of a foreign national executive on Sherman Act charges from Germany in 2014. She regularly coordinates investigations with cartel enforcers around the globe.

Prior to her appointment as Chief of National Criminal Enforcement in 2002, Ms. Phelan was a senior criminal litigator at the Antitrust Division, leading the investigation and the trials of multinational corporations and their executives for price fixing and related crimes. She was, for example, lead prosecutor for U.S. v Nippon Paper. Ms. Phelan has been a member of the American Bar Association, and was for five years a Vice Chair of the Criminal Practices and Procedures Committee of the Antitrust Section. She is currently a member of the ABA Antitrust Section’s International Cartel Task Force. She is a frequent speaker at ABA conferences, International Competition Network events, International Bar and Canadian Bar Association events, and to antitrust and law enforcement agencies around the globe. She is the co-author of an ABA treatise chapter on international cartel trials.