El Al pays damages in price-fixing suit

   Israeli flag carrier El Al became the 16th airline to settle a class-action suit on behalf of freight forwarders who claim they were harmed by paying inflated prices for transportation because of collusion by carriers on surcharges, the elimination or prevention of discounts and commissions.
   El Al agreed to pay $15.8 million to the plaintiffs. The airline’s decision brings the total amount recovered so far to $478.3 million, according to a statement from Hausfeld LLP, the co-lead counsel in the case. The largest restitution, $89 million, was paid by British Airways, followed closely by Air France/KLM/Martinair and Lufthansa.
   The price fixing occurred between 2000 and 2006. A dozen more airlines remain defendants in the case, which is being tried in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
   “For businesses around the globe, this settlement is another step toward holding every participant in this cross-border price-fixing conspiracy accountable for their wrongdoing,” Hollis Salzman, managing partner of Labaton Sucharow LLP’s Antitrust Practice Group, said in a separate statement.
   Earlier this month, two U.S.-based executives at Cargolux Airlines pled guilty and agreed to serve 13 months in prison for participating in the conspiracy to fix cargo rates for international air shipments.
   The criminal case is being pursued by authorities in Europe, Canada and other countries. A total of 22 airlines and 21 executives have been charged in the U.S. Department of Justice’s ongoing investigation of the air cargo industry. To date, more than $1.8 billion in fines have been imposed and four executives sentenced to serve prison time in the United States alone.
   Several countries are also pursuing separate, and unrelated, investigations of price-fixing among several large freight forwarders.