Showa Corp., an automotive parts manufacturer based in Saitama, Japan, will plead guilty and pay a $19.9 million criminal fine for its role in a price fixing conspiracy and rigging bids for electric powered steering assemblies installed in cars sold in the United States and elsewhere, the Department of Justice announced today.
“Today’s guilty plea marks the 27th time a company has been held accountable for fixing prices on parts used to manufacture cars in the United States,” said Bill Baer, Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division.
According to a one-count felony charge filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio in Cincinnati, Showa engaged in a conspiracy to suppress and eliminate competition by agreeing to rig bids and fix prices of pinion-assist electric power steering assemblies in violation of the Sherman Act. The power steering units were sold to Honda Motor Co. and its subsidiaries in the United States and elsewhere.
In addition to the criminal fine, Showa has agreed to cooperate with the department’s ongoing investigation of what is corruption at the highest levels of major Japanese suppliers. The plea agreement will be subject to almost certain court approval.
According to the charge, Showa and its co-conspirators carried out the conspiracy through meetings and conversations during which they discussed and agreed upon bids and prices on electric powered steering assemblies to be submitted to Honda. Showa then submitted quotations from those agreements and sold electric power steering assemblies at “collusive and noncompetitive prices.”
Showa and its co-conspirators monitored adherence to the agreed-upon bid-rigging and price-fixing scheme. The conspirators kept their conduct secret by using code names and meeting at remote locations, among other things. Showa’s involvement lasted from at least as early as 2007 until as late as September 2012.
Including Showa, 27 companies and 24 executives have now pleaded guilty or agreed to plead guilty in an ongoing investigation into price fixing and bid rigging in the auto parts industry. All told, companies and individuals have agreed to pay a total of $2.3 billion in criminal fines.
