A number of leading Japanese forwarders are being investigated for alleged price fi xing in the air freight market after the Japanese Fair Trade Commission (FTC) is said to have conducted a series of raids last month involving over a dozen companies including Nippon Express, Kintetsu World Express, Yusen Air & Sea, Vantec Groupand Nishi-Nippon Railroad.
Th ese fi ve companies dominate the Japanese air forwarding market and the investigations are understood to be focusing on whether the companies colluded over fuel surcharges and security levies back as far as 2004. It is unclear as to whether this latest round of investigations is linked to the on-going probe by US and European anti-trust investigators into air freight cartels.
Japan Airlines was the latest to announce that it had agreed to pay a fi ne of US$110 million to US authorities relating to cartel activity in the transpacifi c freight sector.
British Airways, Lufthansa, Korean Airlines and Qantas have also been implicated in those allegations and agreed to pay substantial fi nes running into several hundreds of millions of dollars.