Competition

• Author: International Law Group

On April 6, 2000, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed four separate criminal cases in a Dallas federal court charging defendants with conspiring between 1990 and 1999 to fix, raise and maintain prices and to allocate the sales volumes of vitamins sold in the U.S. and elsewhere. The conspiracy affected the vitamins most often used as nutritional supplements or to enrich human food and animal feeds. The four defendants included two Swiss nationals, Andreas Hauri and Dieter Suter, and two German citizens, Reinhard Steinmetz and Hugo Strotmann. These four have agreed to submit to the jurisdiction of the Dallas court.

The indictment charges one or more of the executives with conspiring among themselves and with unnamed co-conspirators to engage in the following four types of illegal activities at various times during the 1990s. First, they agreed to fix and increase prices on vitamins A, B2, B5, C, E, and beta carotene as well as on vitamin premixes for food enrichment. Second, they contracted to allocate among themselves the volumes of sales and market shares of these products. Third, they conspired to divide contracts to supply vitamin premixes to U.S. customers and to rig the bids for those contracts. Finally, defendants took part in conferences and discussions aimed at overseeing and enforcing the price and market share arrangements. According to the DOJ, these executives were key actors in setting up and continuing the most far-reaching cartel it has ever prosecuted.

"Steinmetz was President of BASF's Fine Chemicals Division at the beginning of the conspiracy in January 1990 and remained involved in the conspiracy until his departure from the company in March 1996. Suter succeeded Steinmetz as President of the Fine Chemicals Division and continued BASF's participation in the vitamin conspiracy until February 1999. Strotmann joined the ongoing conspiracy in January 1995 in his capacity as BASF's Group Vice President responsible for marketing vitamins for the Fine Chemicals Division. His participation continued until February 1999. Hauri, Hoffman-LaRoche's Director of Worldwide Marketing in the Fine Chemical and Vitamin Division, was involved in the...