Four To Plead Guilty in Global Price-Fixing Scheme
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Four Infineon Technologies AG executives agreed to plead guilty to participating in a global conspiracy to fix the price of digital memory chips, the U.S. Justice Department said.
The executives of the German company are the first individuals to agree to plead guilty and cooperate in the continuing investigation, the Justice Department said. They each will pay a $250,000 fine and serve prison terms ranging from four to six months, the department said.
In October, Infineon became the first company to plead guilty in the scheme and was fined $160 million, the third largest penalty in the history of American antitrust enforcement. The chips are used in computers, mobile phones, and digital cameras.
“This case reinforces our commitment to investigate and hold account able all conspirators, whether domestic or foreign, that harm American consumers,” the Justice Department’s antitrust chief, R. Hewitt Pate, said in a statement. “True deterrence occurs when individuals serve jail terms and not just when corporations pay substantial criminal fines.”
The scheme began July 1999 and lasted to June 2002, suppressing price competition for chips sold to computer makers Dell, Compaq Computer Corporation, Hewlett-Packard, Apple Computer, IBM, and Gateway, the Justice Department said.
Two of the executives have been reassigned and two have left the company or are in the process of leaving, a company spokesman, Christoph Liedtke, said in an e-mail.
The Justice Department said the executives are:
– Heinrich Florian, a German citizen who was vice president for marketing and logistics in 2001 and 2002. He agreed to serve a six-month prison sentence.
– Gunter Hefner, also a German citizen, who agreed to a five-month term for his role in 2001 and 2002 as Infineon’s vice president of sales for memory products.
– Peter Schaefer, a German citizen who was vice president for marketing and sales and logistics for memory products at Infineon’s North American unit in San Jose. He agreed to a four month sentence for fixing prices from 2001 and 2002.
– T. Rudd Corwin, an American citizen charged with fixing prices between 1999 and 2002. Vice president for customer marketing and sales of memory products for the North American unit, he agreed to a four-month sentence.
