As reported at various media outlets, Japan's Furukawa Electric Co. will plead guilty and has agreed to pay a $200 million fine for a price-fixing and bid-rigging conspiracy involving the sale of parts to automakers. Three Furukawa executives also agreed to plead guilty and to serve prison time in the U.S., the U.S. Justice Department reportedly said in a statement.
In the price fixing scam, Furukawa was shown to have conspired to rig bids and fix prices for wire harnesses and related products, the department said. Court documents indicated that the trio of Furukawa executives and co-conspirators ran the scheme by agreeing to allocate the supply of wire harnesses and related products on a model-by-model basis and to coordinate price adjustments requested by car manufacturers in the U.S. and elsewhere. The charges are the first stemming from an ongoing U.S. antitrust probe of the auto-parts industry. Honda is cooperating in the investigation.
“As a result of this international price-fixing and bid- rigging conspiracy, automobile manufacturers paid noncompetitive and higher prices for parts in cars sold to U.S. consumers,” said Sharis Pozen, acting assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department's Antitrust Division, in an offical statement.
Sources:
Furukawa Electric to Pay $200 Million Fine for Price Fixing (BusinessWeek)
Supply base on edge over Furukawa: Global price-fixing probe may lead to more charges (Crain's Detroit Business)
Japanese supplier will admit to price fixing (Detroit Free Press)
