Bridgestone Latest Auto Parts Manufacturer to Plead Guilty to Price Fixing, Will Pay $425 Million
Bridgestone Corp. has pleaded guilty and will pay a $425 million fine for its role in a conspiracy to fix the price of auto parts. The penalty for Bridgestone brings the total fines collected to over $2 billion in the Justice Department’s wide-ranging investigation on auto parts price fixing. According to DOJ, Bridgestone was part of a conspiracy to fix the prices of automotive anti-vibration rubber parts it sold to Toyota, Nissan, Fuji Heavy Industries, Suzuki, and Isuzu, as well as their subsidiaries, affiliates and suppliers, in the U.S. and abroad.
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Bridgestone and its co-conspirators carried out the conspiracy through meetings and conversations in which they discussed and agreed upon bids, prices and allocating sales of certain automotive anti-vibration rubber products, said DOJ. After exchanging this information with its co-conspirators, Bridgestone submitted bids and prices in accordance with those agreements and sold and accepted payments for automotive anti-vibration rubber parts at collusive and noncompetitive prices, it said. Bridgestone’s involvement in the conspiracy lasted from at least January 2001 until at least December 2008.
According to DOJ, Bridgestone pleaded guilty in October 2011 and paid a $28 million fine for price-fixing and Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations in the marine hose industry, but did not disclose at the time of the plea that it had also participated in the anti-vibration rubber parts conspiracy. Bridgestone’s failure to disclose this conspiracy was a factor in determining the $425 million fine, said DOJ.
Including Bridgestone, 26 companies have now pleaded guilty or agreed to plead guilty in DOJ’s ongoing investigation into price fixing and bid rigging in the automotive parts industry. The companies have agreed to pay a total of more than $2 billion in criminal fines, and 28 individuals have been charged, it said.