The US District Court for the district of Maryland in Baltimore said Hiroshige Tanioka was involved in a conspiracy to fix prices, allocate customers and rig bids of international ocean shipping services for ro-ro cargoes to and from the US. According to the one-count felony charge filed Tanioka participated in the conspiracy from at least as early as April 1998 until at least April 2012.
Assistant Attorney General Bill Baer for the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division said “For more than a decade this conspiracy has raised the cost of importing cars and trucks into the US. Today’s sentencing is a first step in our continuing efforts to ensure that the executives responsible for this misconduct are held accountable.”
The Department of Justice said the sentence was the first to be imposed against an individual in the division’s ocean shipping investigation.
Previously, three corporations have agreed to plead guilty and to pay criminal fines totaling more than $136m, including Tanioka’s employer K Line, which was sentenced to pay a criminal fine of $67.7m in November 2014. In addition, Tanioka has agreed to assist the department in its ongoing investigation into the shipping industry.
Tanioka was charged with a violation of the Sherman Act, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a $1m fine for an individual.
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