What happened
The U.S. Department of Justice said Tuesday that four major shipping-container manufacturers and seven Chinese executives have been indicted in a criminal antitrust case alleging they conspired to restrict output and fix prices for standard dry shipping containers during the pandemic-era supply chain crisis.
The DOJ said the alleged conspiracy covered nearly all of the world’s standard unrefrigerated shipping containers and ran from as early as November 2019 to at least January 2024. The agency said the alleged conduct violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act and affected containers used to carry billions of dollars of goods to American households.
The superseding indictment was unsealed in the Northern District of California after Vick Nam Hing Ma, a Singamas Container Holdings Ltd. marketing director, was arrested in France on April 14, according to the release. DOJ said Ma’s extradition to the United States is pending and that six executive co-defendants remain at large.
The companies identified in the release are Singamas, China International Marine Containers (Group) Co. Ltd., Shanghai Universal Logistics Equipment Co. Ltd., which DOJ refers to as Dong Fang, and CXIC Group Containers Co. Ltd. DOJ said each company was in the business of manufacturing dry shipping containers and selling them to customers in the United States and elsewhere.
According to DOJ, conspirators began discussing an output-restriction and price-fixing scheme as early as March 2019, then met in Shenzhen in November 2019 with the goal of raising prices for standard dry shipping containers. The alleged agreement included limits on shifts and production-line hours, video surveillance cameras on dry-container production lines, a commitment not to build new factories and a fund to penalize cheating on the output-restriction agreement.
The release says the alleged conspiracy later evolved to include restrictions on how many containers the companies would make for particular customers, including major U.S.-based container lessors, shipping lines and logistics companies. DOJ also said conspirators later agreed to cap total cargo volume and that Ma co-presented production quotas to Singamas CEO Siong Seng Teo in November 2023.
The charge carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $1 million criminal fine for individuals, and a maximum $100 million fine for corporations, with possible increases tied to gain or victim loss. DOJ emphasized that an indictment is only an allegation and that all defendants are presumed innocent unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.