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US: Japanese exec of Matsuo Electric pleads guilty to price-fixing

By  |  February 9, 2017

A Japanese manufacturing company and one of its executives will plead guilty for their involvement in a conspiracy to fix prices and rig bids for electrolytic capacitors sold to customers in the US.

Matsuo Electric and Satoshi Okubo were charged by federal prosecutors today with participating in a conspiracy to suppress and eliminate competition in the market for electrolytic capacitors. The government said Matsuo and Okubo participated in the conspiracy for more than a decade until about January 2014.

The charges, filed in in the US District Court of the Northern District of California, stem from a long-running investigation into anticompetitive conduct in the electrolytic capacitor industry. So far six companies and 10 individuals have been charged in the investigation conducted jointly by the Justice Department and FBI’s San Francisco field offices.

Matsuo has agreed to pay an undisclosed fine and Okubo will serve a prison term of one year and a day.

Full Content: Bloomberg

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