Washington, Sept 22: A US executive of South Korean electronics giant Samsung agreed to plead guilty and to serve jail time for participating in a global conspiracy to fix prices for memory chips, officials said.
The Justice Department said Thomas Quinn, vice president of marketing for memory products at Samsung Semiconductor, the California-based US unit of Samsung, agreed to the deal that would result in an eight-month prison term and a 250,000-dollar fine.
Quinn was charged with violating the US antitrust laws in a one-count criminal complaint alleging participation in an agreement to fix prices of dynamic random access memory (dram) chips.
The plea agreement, which must be approved by a US federal judge, also calls for Quinn to assist the ongoing investigation.
"Prison time for price-fixers remains the most potent deterrent to illegal cartel activity," said Thomas Barnett, Assistant Attorney general in charge of the department's antitrust division.
"Today's action sends a clear message: those who engage in price-fixing schemes will be held accountable for their illegal conduct."
To date, four companies and 13 individuals have been charged and fines totaling more than 731 million have resulted from the dram investigation.
Last November, Samsung pleaded guilty as a company to charges of price fixing in a deal that came with a fine of 300 million dollars.
Bureau Report
