After Corporate Crime Reporter published a story reporting that a unit of Corning Incorporated — Corning International Kabushiki Kaisha (CIKK) — plead guilty to an auto price fixing charge and will pay $66.5 million — we received an email from the parent saying, in effect — hey our kid did not, not us.

“Corning did not engage in any illegal activities, and the Department of Justice has agreed not to prosecute Corning,” Corning says in its press release.

We ask the Corning spokesperson — how do we know this?

The Corning spokesperson says that it’s in the actual plea agreement.

Where is that? It wasn’t included with either the Corning or Justice Department press releases.

We ring up the Justice Department.

After a couple of hours, we get the actual plea agreement.

And in fact, the plea agreement has embedded in it a non prosecution agreement with the parent, Corning Inc. And in it, the Department of Justice agrees that if the company abides by the terms of the agreement, the Department will not prosecute Corning or any of its executives.

Corning was represented by Steve Sunshine, Tiffany Rider and David Meister of Skadden Arps.

“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,” said Yasuya Nakano, president of CIKK. “The actions of this individual impacted one Japanese automotive company and did not impact any other automotive companies in Japan, the U.S., or elsewhere. This individual, acting completely alone, purposefully and successfully hid his actions from everyone at CIKK and Corning. His actions violated both CIKK’s and Corning’s Codes of Conduct and strict compliance requirements and were, in fact, detrimental to both companies.”