Japanese auto parts company pleads guilty to antitrust conspiracy
Staff Writer |
Maruyasu Industries, an automotive parts manufacturer headquartered in the Aichi Prefecture in Japan, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to pay a $12 million criminal fine for its role in a criminal conspiracy to fix prices, rig bids, and allocate customers for automotive steel tubes incorporated into vehicles sold in the United States and elsewhere, the Department of Justice announced.
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Automotive steel tubes are used in fuel distribution, braking and other automotive systems and are sometimes divided into two categories – chassis tubes and engine parts.
Chassis tubes, such as brake and fuel tubes, tend to be located in the body of a vehicle while engine parts, such as fuel injection rails, oil level tubes and oil strainer tubes, are associated with the function of a vehicle’s engine.
Maruyasu pleaded guilty to a charge contained in an Indictment returned by a grand jury on June 15, 2016, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio.
According to the plea agreement, Maruyasu participated in a conspiracy to suppress and eliminate competition by agreeing to fix prices, allocate customers, and rig bids for automotive steel tubes sold to automobile manufacturers in Japan and incorporated into vehicles sold in the United States, in violation of the Sherman Act.
The Indictment also charged Maruyasu’s wholly-owned U.S. subsidiary, Curtis-Maruyasu America Inc., and sales executives Tadao Hirade, Kazunori Kobayashi, Satoru Murai, and Yoshihiro Shigematsu.
Concurrent with the Court’s imposition of the sentence against Maruyasu, the United States moved to dismiss the Indictment as to Curtis-Maruyasu America Inc., Hirade, Kobayashi, and Shigematsu.
The sales executives will be required to cooperate with the government in any future prosecutions related to the charged conspiracy.
A Maruyasu spokesperson stated: "We knew all along that the U.S. regulators would not be able to support their broad allegations. We are pleased with this outcome.
"We do apologize to Nissan, the single customer who was victimized by our misconduct in Japan ten years ago. We are committed to all of our customers to never have a repeat of this misconduct."
Maruyasu does not sell any product in the United States or to any U.S. customer. Maruyasu's U.S. subsidiary, Curtis-Maruyasu America, Inc. (CMA), was not involved in Maruyasu's misconduct.
Indeed, all of the U.S. regulators' charges against CMA and its former employees were dismissed, with prejudice, by the court. ■