WASHINGTON — A Japan-Based manufacture of automotive parts plead guilty and agreed to pay a $26 million criminal fine for its role in conspiracies to fix prices and rig bids for automotive hoses, airbags and steering wheels sold to automobile manufacturers, federal officials announced Monday
According to a two-count felony charge filed in the U.S. District Court in Toledo, Toyoda Gosei Inc. conspired to fix the prices of certain automotive hoses sold to Toyota Motor Corp. and certain of its subsidiaries, affiliates and suppliers in the United States.
So far, 43 defendants have been charged in the government’s ongoing investigation into price fixing and bid rigging in the auto parts industry. Twenty-nine companies, including Toyoda Gosei, have pleaded guilty or agreed to plead guilty and have agreed to pay a total of nearly $2.4 billion in fines.
In addition, Gosei .conspired to fix the prices of automotive airbags and steering wheels sold to Toyota and Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd. and certain of its subsidiaries, affiliates and suppliers, and certain of their subsidiaries, affiliates and suppliers .
Toyoda Gosei agreed to cooperate in the department’s ongoing investigation. The plea agreement is subject to court approval.
“When purchasing an automobile, American consumers should feel confident that the sticker price is based on fair market costs to manufacture the vehicle,” said Brent Snyder, Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the U.S. Justice Department’s Antitrust Division’s criminal enforcement program. “The Antitrust Division will continue to prosecute cases in the auto parts industry to ensure fair and competitive prices are maintained.”
Here is how authorities claim that Toyoda Gosei and other co-conspirators committed these crimes:
- Through meetings they discussed and agreed upon bids and price quotations to be submitted to certain automakers and to allocate the supply of the products to those automakers.
- Toyoda Gosei then sold certain automotive hoses at noncompetitive prices to Toyota in the United States, and sold airbags and steering wheels at noncompetitive prices to Toyota and Subaru in the U.S. and elsewhere.
- Toyoda Gosei’s involvement in the automotive hoses conspiracy lasted from at least as early as February 2004 until at least September 2010.
- Its involvement in the automotive airbags and steering wheels conspiracy lasted from at least as early as September 2003 until at least September 2010.