US: Bumble Bee turns in documents for price-fixing probe

Bumble Bee Foods has handed over one million pages of documents to the US Department of Justice (DOJ) in its probe of price fixing in the US shelf-stable seafood sector, according to a legal document, reported Undercurrent news.

Bumble Bee, based in California, handed over 1.2 million pages of documents it has produced for the DOJ to the plaintiffs in the civil lawsuits accusing the US tuna giants and their foreign owners of price fixing.

This revelation on the scale of documentation the DOJ has on the alleged cartel was made in an April 10 order from Janis Sammartino, a judge for the southern district of California. In the order, Sammartino ruled the plaintiffs in the civil price-fixing suits can add Bumble Bee’s private equity owner Lion Capital and other linked entities to the lawsuits, but not Chris Lischewski, the seafood firm’s CEO.

According to the document, the documents Bumble Bee had given to the DOJ were given to the plaintiffs on March 31, 2017. Then, in May, the plaintiffs in the civil cases filed amended complaints, containing a raft of new allegations.

Full Content: Under Current News

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