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Samsung President Pleads Guilty to RAM Price Fixing
by , 8:35 AM EST, December 22nd, 2006
Young Hwan Park , president of San Jose-based Samsung Semiconductor Inc., has agreed to plead guilty to computer memory price fixing charges. BusinessWeek reports that he will serve a prison sentence for his part in a scheme that over charged Apple and other computer manufacturers for DRAM memory modules.
The charges against Samsung's president stemmed from a U.S. Department of Justice investigation into a price fixing scheme where several memory chip manufacturers artificially raised prices in 2001.
Samsung is not discussing its plans now that its leader faces jail time. Company spokeswoman Chris Goodhart commented "Samsung is strongly committed to fair competition and ethical practices and forbids anticompetitive behavior."
Several other top executives have also pled guilty to similar charges. In September, vice president of marketing Thomas Quinn pled guilty and received an 8 month prison sentence and US$250,000 fine.
In March, senior manager of DRAM sales, Sun Woo Lee, agreed to a deal that includes an eight month prison sentence. Yeongho Kang, associate director of DRAM Marketing, and Young Woo Lee, sales director for Samsung's German subsidiary, get to spend seven months in prison as a part of their plea deals.
Observer Comments
The fines are small compared to the monopoly profits, and none of the money goes to reimburse the people who paid the inflated prices!
It was definitely strange to see prices start rising after dropping precipitously.
Of course, companies can fix prices *without* illegally colluding - for example, gas stations on the same corner can see each other's prices, allowing one station to raise prices as soon as another station does.
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