Stolt charged with antitrust crimes
The federal government’s has indicted parcel tanker operator Stolt Nielsen for antitrust crimes.
A federal grand jury in Philadelphia on Wednesday returned an indictment against Stolt-Nielsen and two subsidiaries with offices in Greenwich, Conn. Also named in the indictment are Samuel A. Cooperman, former chief executive officer, and Richard B. Wingfield, former executive vice president.
The indictment charges Stolt-Nielsen and its executives with price fixing, customer allocation, and bid rigging, said Thomas O. Barnett, assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s antitrust division.
“Cracking down on international cartels is the antitrust division’s top priority, and the division will continue its efforts to aggressively pursue such illegal activity,” he said.
Parcel tankers transport bulk chemicals, edible oils, acids, and other specialty liquids in compartmentalized deep sea vessels.
Stolt-Nielsen said Justice’s indictment was “in direct violation of its express promise in a written amnesty agreement” made in 2003. The company said the antitrust division promised it would not bring any criminal prosecution against it or its executives for conduct that occurred prior to Jan. 15, 2003.
James B. Hurlock, a member of Stolt’s board said, “By indicting Stolt-Nielsen, the Antitrust Division broke its promise not to prosecute the company, and in doing so acted contrary to the spirit and letter of the law.”
But Justice said it revoked the conditional leniency that it had granted Stolt-Nielsen in March 2004 because the company had not actually taken “prompt and effective action to terminate its part in the anticompetitive activity” when it was discovered.
Justice said: “the alleged conspiracy began at least as early as August 1998 and continued until as late as November 2002.” It said Stolt-Nielsen and competitors Odfjell Seachem and JO Tankers met and agreed not to compete for one another’s customers for contracts of affreightment by refraining from seeking business from one another’s customers, or when asked to bid by such customers, declining to bid or submitting fraudulent bids with intentionally high prices.
Justice said the companies also discussed customers and prices for contracts of affreightment to avoid competition, traded customer lists and continued to carry out the conspiracy after it was discovered by Stolt-Nielsen’s then general counsel.
“The division revoked the conditional leniency after it learned from other sources that top Stolt-Nielsen executives, including its managing director Wingfield, had continued to meet with competitors and participate in the conspiracy for months after the scheme’s discovery by Stolt-Nielsen’s then-general counsel, and that Stolt had both withheld and provided false and misleading information about the true extent of the conspiracy,” the Justice Department said.
In February 2004, Stolt-Nielsen and Wingfield filed lawsuits seeking an injunction to prevent the indictments, and in January 2005 the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania granted it.
Stolt charged with antitrust crimes
