Nippon Seiki to Plead Guilty to Price Fixing Auto Parts

Nagoka, Japan-based Nippon Seiki Co. will plead guilty and pay a $1 million criminal fine for its role in a conspiracy to fix prices of instrument panel clusters, commonly known as meters.

Prosecutors filed a one-count felony charge in the U.S. District Court in Detroit.

They alleged that Nippon Seiki engaged in conspiracies to rig bids for, and to fix, stabilize and maintain the prices of instrument panel clusters sold to an automaker in the United States and elsewhere.

Nippon Seiki’s involvement in the conspiracy lasted from at least as early as April 2008 until at least February 2010.

Nippon Seiki manufactures and sells a variety of automotive parts, including instrument panel clusters.

Instrument panel clusters are the mounted array of instruments and gauges housed in front of the driver of an automobile.

Federal officials alleged that Nippon Seiki and its co-conspirators carried out the conspiracy by agreeing, during meetings and conversations, to rig bids for, and to fix, stabilize and maintain the prices of instrument panel clusters, sold to an automaker in the United States and elsewhere, on a model-by-model basis.

Including Nippon Seiki, eight companies and 11 executives have been charged in the department’s ongoing investigation into price fixing and bid rigging in the auto parts industry.

Furukawa Electric Co. Ltd., DENSO Corp., Yazaki Corp., G.S. Electech Inc., Fujikura Ltd. and Autoliv Inc. pled guilty and were sentenced to pay a total of more than $785 million in criminal fines.

In July 2012, TRW Deutschland Holding GmbH agreed to plead guilty.

Seven of the individuals – Junichi Funo, Hirotsugu Nagata, Tetsuya Ukai, Tsuneaki Hanamura, Ryoki Kawai, Shigeru Ogawa and Hisamitsu Takada – have been sentenced to pay criminal fines and to serve jail sentences ranging from a year and a day to two years each.

Makoto Hattori and Norihiro Imai have pled guilty and await sentencing.

Kazuhiko Kashimoto and Toshio Sudo will also plead guilty.

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