Yazaki to pay $470 mn in US price-fixing case

Japanese auto parts supplier Yazaki will pay $470 million for price-fixing, the second-largest US criminal antitrust fine in history, the Justice Department said Monday. Yazaki and another Japanese firm, Denso, have agreed to plead guilty for price-fixing and bid-rigging in the United States, the department said in a statement. Denso agreed to pay a $78 million criminal fine, the department said. Four Yazaki executives, all Japanese nationals, each have also agreed to plead guilty, pay a $20,000 criminal fine, and serve prison time in the United States, the department said. The executives were identified as Tsuneaki Hanamura, Ryoji Kawai, Shigeru Ogawa and Hisamitsu Takada. The executives face prison sentences ranging from 15 months to two years. The two-year sentence would be the longest prison term imposed on a foreign national who has voluntarily submitted to US authorities for violating antitrust rules under the Sherman Act, the department noted. The fine amounts and prison sentences are subject to court approval. Yazaki Corporation and Denso Corporation and their co-conspirators sold wire harnesses and related electrical components to automobile manufacturers at inflated prices and ran a bid-rigging and price-fixing scheme, the Justice Department said. "As a result of the Antitrust Division's ongoing criminal investigation of price fixing and bid rigging in the auto parts industry, more than $748 million in fines have been obtained -- which already surpasses the total amount in criminal fines obtained by the division for all of last fiscal year," Sharis Pozen, acting assistant attorney general in charge of the antitrust division.