Countries Where Corporations Cheat the Free Market the Most

Mumbai-based Sun Pharmaceuticals, a leading manufacturer of generic drugs, agreed to pay $485 million in 2022 to settle legal troubles it inherited following its 2014 acquisition of Indian drugmaker Ranbaxy Laboratories. Ranbaxy was sued by numerous generic drug buyers that accused the company of submitting fraudulent or incomplete applications in the U.S. for drug-approvals to temporarily keep competitors from entering the market for three medications.

Since 2000, Sun or its subsidiaries have accrued $621.6 million in U.S. price-fixing or anti-competitive penalties, comprising 62% of all penalties accrued by Indian-based companies.

Powerex, the for-profit subsidiary of British Columbia’s state-owned power utility, agreed in 2013 to pay Californians $750 million to settle allegations of price-gouging during the state’s 2000-2001 power crisis. The province’s Energy Minister Bill Bennett said the decision was made to avoid the possibility of a $3.2 billion judgment if the subsidiary were to lose at trial. Powerex was one of numerous power producers that were accused of price gouging or price fixing during the crisis that led to rolling blackouts and record-high electricity bills throughout the state.

In all, 34 Canadian-based companies paid $1.6 billion in price-fixing penalties in the U.S. since 2000.

In 2013, Utrecht-based Rabobank forked out $800 million to settle U.S. federal criminal and civil charges that it attempted to manipulate the benchmark Libor and the Euribor rates. The penalties stem from the discovery in 2012 of a massive rate-rigging scandal involving some of the world’s biggest banks. Deutsche Bank, Barclays, and Société Générale — headquartered in three of the other biggest offender countries on this list — were also implicated in the scandal.

Though Rabobank is the biggest offender, accounting for at least half of all penalties paid by Dutch-based companies, in total Dutch companies paid $1.63 billion in price-fixing penalties since 2000.

The so-called Libor scandal, in which bankers at major financial institutions were colluding to manipulate benchmark interbank lending rates, led to waves of lawsuits and penalties that rippled through the financial system after the scheme was exposed by journalists in 2012. Paris-based Société Générale accrued $584.6 million in U.S. penalties for price-fixing and anti-competitive practices. The largest penalty, of $475 million, was paid by the bank to settle civil charges related to the rate-rigging scandal.

SocGen’s price-fixing penalties no doubt amount to the largest sum, but in total, French-based companies paid $2.1 billion in such penalties since 2000.

The biggest U.S. price-fixing or anti-competitive penalty levied against an Israeli-based parent company since 2000 was $1.2 billion paid by Teva Pharmaceuticals. Three years after it acquired U.S. drug manufacturer Cephalon in 2012, Teva settled a civil lawsuit brought by the Federal Trade Commission, which accused the company of illegally blocking generic competition to its popular sleep-disorder drug Provigil.

From 2012 to 2015, the maker of optoelectronic products like touchscreens AU Optronics was slapped with a series of antitrust lawsuits stemming from a broader years-long price-fixing scheme by numerous Asian companies aimed at coordinating the prices of liquid crystal displays used in laptops desktops computers, and televisions sold to U.S. companies, including Dell and Apple. AUO paid $682.5 million to settle these suits. Other Taiwanese-based companies also paid price-fixing penalties for a total of $2.66 billion since 2000.

Like Taiwan’s AU Optronics, the South Korean multinational conglomerate was forced to settle lawsuits from its involvement in fixing prices of liquid crystal display panels sold to U.S. tech companies from 1999 to 2006. Most of the $966 million LG has paid since 2000 for U.S. charges of price-fixing or anti-competitive practices originates from this antitrust litigation, including a $400 million fine in 2008 in which LG Display pled guilty in a criminal case brought by the U.S. Justice Department.

While LG is the biggest offender, South Korean-based companies have paid over $4.2 billion in price-fixing penalties since 2000.

Swiss commodity trader and mining company Glencore paid nearly $1.2 billion to settle U.S. civil and criminal charges of price-fixing or anti-competitive practices. The company agreed to pay $700 million of that sum to settle government investigations into violations of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits companies with U.S. operations or with stock listed on U.S. stock exchanges from bribing officials in foreign countries for favorable treatment. Glencore also pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to manipulate commodity prices in its fuel oil trading operations in the U.S., paying an additional $485 million.

Four of the biggest offenders on this list, including Deutsche Bank, are financial firms that were embroiled in the massive rate-rigging scandal that was exposed in 2012, in which bankers at major financial institutions colluded as far back as 2003 to manipulate the benchmark interest rates. The Frankfurt-based banking giant or its subsidiaries have paid out $4.1 billion to settle U.S. charges of price-fixing or anti-competitive practices, including nearly $1.6 billion to settle two cases of U.S. civil and criminal charges related to the manipulation of the Libor and Euribor interest rate benchmarks.

Privately-held Japanese automotive parts supplier Yazaki has paid $791.5 million since 2000 to settle U.S. charges of price-fixing or anti-competitive practices. In one of these cases, Yazaki and another Japanese auto parts supplier, Denso, pled guilty in 2012 to price-fixing and bid-rigging in a scheme to defraud U.S.-based automobile manufacturers. In 2013, nine other Japanese automotive industry suppliers pleaded guilty to rigging prices for 30 products used in vehicles built or sold in the U.S., leading to fines of more than $740 million. In total, Japanese-based companies have paid over $8.7 billion in price-fixing penalties since 2000.

British banking giant Barclays paid more than a third of the total of U.S. price-fixing penalties from U.K.-headquartered companies since 2000. Out of the $3.75 billion Barclays has paid to settle such charges, $710 million came from a guilty plea for conspiring to manipulate the price of U.S. dollars and euros in the foreign exchange spot market. Citicorp, JPMorgan Chase & Co., and the Royal Bank of Scotland also pleaded guilty and agreed to pay $1.75 billion. Barclays was also involved in the rate-rigging scandal that was exposed in 2012, in which bankers at major financial institutions colluded to manipulate the Libor and Euribor interbank lending rates.

U.S.-headquartered companies have paid by far the largest amount of U.S. penalties related to anti-competitive practices. San Francisco-based financial services provider Visa is on the hook for nearly 13% of that total, or $6.2 billion, though a large sum of that is still being litigated. In 2019, Visa agreed to pay $4.1 billion to settle charges of colluding to raise swipe fees charged to merchants. MasterCard agreed to pay $2.1 billion in the case. In March, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit denied an attempt by gas station owners to dismantle the class-action settlement that covers about 12 million businesses, according to Bloomberg Law.