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Jail Time For Price-Fixing Car Parts

Posted by Soulskill on from the hey-they-did-something dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The U.S. Dept. of Justice has announced that Panasonic and its subsidiary Sanyo have been fined $56.5 million for their roles in price fixing conspiracies involving battery cells and car parts. The fines are part of a larger investigation into the prices of auto parts. Interestingly, 12 people at various companies have been sentenced to jail time, and three more are going to prison. Since the charges are felonies, none of the sentences are shorter than a year and a day. Criminal fines targeting these companies has totaled over $874 million. 'The conduct of Panasonic, SANYO, and LG Chem resulted in inflated production costs for notebook computers and cars purchased by U.S. consumers. These investigations illustrate our efforts to ensure market fairness for U.S. businesses by bringing corporations to justice when their commercial activity violates antitrust laws.'"

8 of 116 comments (clear)

  1. Banksters by Ultracrepidarian · · Score: 2, Insightful

    And the banksters go free.

    1. Re:Banksters by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Well it turns out that the US justice system is one such that people have to actually violate a law to be tried and convicted, not to just make someone on Slashdot mad. So, if you think a banker should go to jail, then let's hear the details: Who is it, what law did they break, and what evidence do you have of this? Also remember it had to be illegal at the time they did it. If new laws were introduced later in response to what happened, those don't count, the US Constitution explicitly prohibits ex post facto laws.

      "They caused the economy to crash!" is not a valid answer, and also shows a rather large amount of ignorance of the situation (if you think the downturn had a singular cause, you need to do more research).

      This whining gets a little old. People cry that "the bankers" (or "banksters" in your case) should go to jail but yet never seem to be able to cite specifics. That to me says you don't actually know of any laws broken, you are just mad and think that you're angry should be reason enough to convict someone.

      So, if there are specific cases you think should be prosecuted, then don't whine about "banksters" as some large group, any more than someone should whine about "hackers" as some large group. Post those specific cases. If not, then maybe spend some time reconsidering your position.

    2. Re:Banksters by professionalfurryele · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Lets ignore the fact that your words ring hollow because they bribed and bought the system to make their acts legal. There were things which should at least result in a court case.

      Improper reporting of their assets. They claimed their collateralised debt obligations were worth more than they were on their balance sheets and there is clear evidence they knew they were worth less than they claimed. How about Merril Lynch selling CDOs to Lonestar, claiming it was for 22% of the face value when the terms of the deal made it clear they were only selling them for about 6% of the face value.

      Or for a more recent example HSBC acting as banker for the worlds terrorists and getting a slap on the wrist.

      These people are scum, and some of them did illegal things. We should be going through our banking system one banker at a time searching all their records and looking for anything they may have done which was complicit in causing the crash and going after each and every one of them personally, no point in going after the banks themselves if we are just going to bail them out.

  2. Where is the refund for consumers ? by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The Fed caught the crooks, fined them, and threw some of them into the slammer.

    But what about the consumers who had been cheated ?

    Don't we deserve some refunds?

    I mean, we paid overpriced batteries for our notebooks, overpriced car parts for our vehicles, and so on.

    Don't we deserve to get our money back ?

    Any attorney here ?

    --
    Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
    1. Re:Where is the refund for consumers ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And when they're mugged, most people decide their lives are worth more than the cash they parted with, so you see how they were cheated?

  3. Re:internet yes, movies, yes, but banks ? by noh8rz8 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    libor. rate fixing to make borrowing more expensive and lending more profitable.

    --
    You want to upvote/downvote? Go back to Reddit! Here we mod up/mod down.
  4. Yay! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    Thank you for saving us from those evil auto parts people! They are so important. Unlike banks who are totally optional and not needed by everyone. You can totally do without money. Unlike car parts. And i'm sure those bankers didn't make one extra cent from all the dirty evil price fixing that happened.

    Oh.... ... fuck...

  5. Foreign Companies by runeghost · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Obviously, they haven't mastered the fine American art of purchasing politicans and judges.