A Japanese auto parts company and three of its executives agreed Thursday to plead guilty to four separate felony price-fixing charges filed in a Detroit federal court.
Junichi Funo, Hirotsugu Nagata and Tetsuya Ukai, executives at Furukawa, will serve prison sentences in the U.S. ranging from a year to 18 months, and the company has agreed to pay a $200 million fine for Sherman Act violations, according to a Department of Justice news release.
Violating the Sherman Act carries a maximum ten year sentence, but as part of the plea agreement, Funo, Nagata, Ukai and the company agreed to cooperate with the Justice Department’s ongoing investigation into price fixing in the auto parts industry.
The three executives admitted to conspiring to rig bids for and manipulate the prices of automotive electrical distribution systems and other related products sold in the United States and other parts of the world.
Funo worked in the Honda sales division of Furukawa in Japan and in the United States as a sales representative in a managerial role. Nagata was a general manager of sales and a chief financial officer of a Furukawa subsidiary in the United States. Ukai was a general manager in Japan for the Honda sales division of Furukawa.
The DOJ said that the conspiracy spanned at least all of the last decade.
“This cartel harmed an important industry in our nation’s economy, and the Antitrust Division with the Federal Bureau of Investigation will continue to work together to ensure that these kinds of conspiracies are stopped,” Sharis Pozen, Acting Assistant Attorney General of DOJ’s Antitrust Division said.
