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Jail Time For Price-Fixing Car Parts
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.'"
After the manufactures of the cars and laptops designed cars that needed these parts, the only suppliers who could make them in quantity COLLUDED to set high prices. The buyer's choice was
a) be overcharged
b) stop making cars
That's not a real choice. The buyer gets ripped off, paying twice as much as they would with competition instead of conspiracy. In the US, that's illegal. You go to jail for that. Unless of course you donate much of the ill-gotten gain to the Democrats, in which case its illegal for buyers to try break the conspiracy. In some states, sellers are REQUIRED to be part of the price-fixing conspiracy, aka union.