FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                          AT
TUESDAY, MARCH 18, 1997                            (202) 616-2771
                                               TDD (202) 514-1888

  FIRST CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS REVERSES LOWER COURT'S DECISION
        TO DISMISS INDICTMENT IN FAX PAPER ANTITRUST CASE


   Decision Confirms that U.S. Antitrust Laws Apply to Foreign
                Conduct that Harms U.S. Consumers


Joel I. Klein, Acting Assistant Attorney General in charge of the
Department's Antitrust Division made the following statement
today regarding the First Circuit Court of Appeals' decision
yesterday in the Nippon Paper Industries Co. Ltd. case:

     We are extremely gratified by the court's decision.  This
case is very important to the Antitrust Division's enforcement
effort against international cartels that harm U.S. consumers. 
We need to be able to reach such cartels no matter where the
cartel activity takes place.  Otherwise, when companies that are
members of a cartel sell products to the United States, we cannot
fully protect American consumers against artificially inflated
prices.  The court's decision is based squarely on controlling
Supreme Court precedent regarding the geographic reach of the
Sherman Act.  

     As the Court of Appeals explained, "[w]e live in an age of
international commerce, where decisions reached in one corner of
the world can reverberate around the globe in less time than it
takes to tell the tale.  Thus, a ruling in [Nippon Paper
Industries's] favor would create perverse incentives for those
who would use nefarious means to influence markets in the United
States, rewarding them for erecting as many territorial firewalls
as possible between cause and effect."

     The court also said, "[The] Hartford Fire [decision]
definitely establishes that Section One of the Sherman Act
applies to wholly foreign conduct which has an intended and
substantial effect in the United States....Under settled
principles of statutory construction, we also are bound to apply
it by interpreting Section One the same way in a criminal case."

     The court's decision reinstates the indictment against
Nippon Paper Industries Co. Ltd. and remands the case to the
District Court for further proceedings.  In December 1995, a
grand jury indicted Nippon Paper and others for conspiring with
competitors in Japan to fix fax paper prices expressly for the
purpose of raising prices to American consumers.

                               ###
97-116