Nine Japanese companies and two executives will pay approximately $745 million (€552 million) in fines after they pleaded guilty for conspiracies to fix the prices of auto parts sold to U.S. automakers.
The Department of Justice said that price-fixed automobile parts were sold to Chrysler Group, Ford and General Motors, as well as to the U.S. subsidiaries of Honda, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Toyota and Subaru.
According to a Reuters report, the activity, which involved separate conspiracies to fix prices of more than 30 different products, lasted for a decade or longer in some cases. Among the parts were seat belts, radiators, windshield wipers, air-conditioning systems, power window motors and power steering components.
These components were sold to automakers for an estimated $5 billion (€3.7 billion), with more than 25 million cars being affected by said practice. However, it is unclear how much the conspiracies inflated the price of the parts.
Antitrust enforcers from many countries have been working on the case, with Japan’s competition agency being the first to uncover the illegal activities. Each of the companies and executives involved has agreed to cooperate with the Department of Justice’s ongoing antitrust investigation.
Company executives usually met face to face or talked via telephone to arrange price-fixing agreements. “In order to keep their illegal conduct secret, they used code names and met in remote locations,” said Attorney General Eric Holder.
The companies involved are Hitachi Automotive Systems, Jtekt Corp, Mitsuba Corp, Mitsubishi Electric Corp, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, NSK, T.RAD Co, Valeo Japan Co and Yamashita Rubber.
By Dan Mihalascu
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