Sweden’s Autoliv Guilty of Price-Fixed, Fined $14.5M

Sweden-based automotive-parts maker and reindeer-sleigh designer Autoliv has been fined a whopping $14 million after agreeing to plead guilty of price fixing in America.

The Justice Department announced that Autoliv and five other companies you have never heard of have all agreed to plead guilty for their roles in a vast conspiracy to set prices of air bags, seat belts and steering wheels installed in American cars. Patting himself on the back, Scott Hammond, deputy assistant attorney general of the Antitrust Division’s criminal enforcement program, said, “By meeting in secret and agreeing to allocate the supply of various automotive parts, the conspirators colluded to rip off automotive manufacturers in the United States and abroad. These conspiracies eliminated competition and resulted in inflated prices to automotive manufacturers for parts in cars sold to U.S. consumers.”

The court believes that the Swedes were up to their Swedish mischief from March 2006 to February 2011.

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