Antitrust Division Grand Jury Investigations, Fiscal Year 2022

Grand jury investigations the Division's criminal program had pending or newly opened during the fiscal year.

Grand jury investigation counts are the earliest and least visible signal in the Division's criminal enforcement pipeline — by design, grand jury proceedings are secret, and companies under investigation are frequently barred from disclosing the fact of the investigation even to counterparties, which means the aggregate pending-investigation figure the Division publishes is one of the only public signals of investigative activity that has not yet produced a public charge. A rising trend in pending investigations in a given fiscal year is a leading indicator of future criminal case filings, typically with a multi-year lag before charges are actually brought.

Duration is the defining feature of this category: grand jury investigations into cartel conduct routinely run for years before producing an indictment or plea agreement, driven by the covert nature of the underlying conduct and the investigative work required to develop cooperating witnesses and documentary evidence sufficient to charge. A company that becomes aware it is subject to a grand jury investigation — through a subpoena, an employee interview, or a leniency applicant's disclosure obligation — should plan for a multi-year overhang before the investigation's outcome, whether that is a declination, a corporate plea, or individual charges against specific employees.

For insurers and funders, the practical difficulty with this category is that it is the least observable input into an exposure model — a portfolio company can be under active grand jury investigation without any public disclosure obligation triggering, which means duration and resolution-path modeling for this stage of the antitrust enforcement pipeline has to rely on industry-level and conduct-type base rates rather than matter-specific public information, until and unless a charge is eventually filed.

Resolution paths from a grand jury investigation branch into declination (no charges), corporate plea agreement, or indictment proceeding to trial, with the leniency program creating a strong incentive for the first company to self-report and cooperate to receive materially more favorable treatment than any company that waits to be charged. Criterica Intelligence frames grand jury investigation trends as the earliest available leading indicator in the antitrust enforcement cycle, for the companies, insurers, and funders that need to model exposure before it becomes publicly visible as a filed case.

Figures on this page are drawn from official agency publications, cited individually below, and reflect the agency’s own reporting as of the date shown for each figure. They are not Criterica Intelligence model outputs, are not predictions, and are not a measure of any party’s legal exposure or liability. Agencies periodically revise prior-year figures; where a revision is known, both figures are shown with their sources. This page does not constitute legal, investment, or compliance advice.