US: Corning subsidiary to pay $66.5 million in auto price fixing probe

A Japanese subsidiary of Corning Inc has agreed to pay $66.5 million in criminal fines and plead guilty to fixing the prices of materials used in catalytic converters for cars, the US Justice Department said on Monday.

The deal made by Corning International Kabushiki Kaisha is the latest in a long list of settlements in a years-long probe by the Justice Department and antitrust enforcers internationally in the auto parts industry.

The price fixing started in mid-1999 and ran until mid-2011, with the affected products sold to Ford Motor Co, General Motors LLC, Honda Motor Co Ltd and others, the department said.

The company is accused of conspiring to fix the price of ceramic substrates, used in catalytic converters to reduce pollution.

“Corning International K.K. – and Nobuhiko Niwa, its former executive, who was indicted last week – spent more than a decade colluding on sales of an important component of emissions systems,” Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brent Snyder of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division said in a statement. “But they have now been held accountable for the competitive harm they caused.”

Corning said in a statement that the indicted executive acted alone and without the company’s knowledge.

“This case is about the actions of one former employee of CIKK, who secretly disclosed CIKK’s and Corning’s confidential information to a competitor, where he previously had worked for many years,” CIKK President Yasuya Nakano said in a statement. “This individual, acting completely alone, purposefully and successfully hid his actions from everyone at CIKK and Corning.”

Full Content: Reuters

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