Panasonic and Sanyo plead guilty to US price-fixing charges

Panasonic and Sanyo have agreed to pay criminal fines in excess of several million dollars after pleading guilty to separate allegations of price-fixing, according to the US justice department.

According to BBC, the allegations relate to car parts and notebook computer batteries, and there are other companies which are named in the ongoing probe that include South Korea's LG Chem.

The US Justice department said that including Panasonic, 11 companies and 15 executives had pleaded guilty or agreed to plead guilty and had agreed to pay a total of more than 874 million dollars in criminal fines as a result of the auto parts investigation.

Panasonic was accused of conspiring to fix the prices of switches for steering wheels, turn signals and windscreen wipers among other car parts sold to Toyota Motor, with the price-fixing taking place during the period of September 2003 to February 2010, the report said.

The allegations against Sanyo and LG Chem involve the lithium ion battery cells used in notebook computer battery packs, the report added.