KYB Agrees To Pay $62 Mln Fine For Fixing Price Of Shock Absorbers

(RTTNews) - Kayaba Industry Co. Ltd., dba KYB Corporation has agreed to plead guilty and to pay a $62 million criminal fine for its role in a conspiracy to fix the price of shock absorbers installed in cars and motorcycles sold to U.S. consumers, the U.S. department of Justice.

According to charges filed today, KYB conspired from the mid-1990s until 2012 to fix the prices of shock absorbers sold to Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd. (manufacturer of Subaru vehicles), Honda Motor Co. Ltd., Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd., Nissan Motor Company Ltd., Suzuki Motor Corporation and Toyota Motor Company, including their subsidiaries in the United States.

According to the information filed in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Ohio, KYB, based in Tokyo, and its two co-conspirators agreed to allocate the supply of shock absorbers sold and determine the price submitted to the targeted vehicle manufacturers. To keep prices up, KYB and its co-conspirators also agreed to coordinate on price adjustments requested by the vehicle manufacturers and strived to keep their conduct secret.