Takata will plead guilty, pay $1 billion
DETROIT — Takata Corp. has agreed to plead guilty to a single criminal charge and will pay $1 billion in fines and restitution for a years-long scheme to conceal a deadly defect in its automotive air bag inflators.
The U.S. attorney’s office in Detroit announced the deal Friday, hours after it unsealed a sixcount grand jury indictment against three former Takata executives who are accused of executing the scheme by falsifying and altering test reports that showed the inflators could rupture.
Takata inflators can explode with too much force, spewing shrapnel into automobiles. At least 11 people have been killed in the U.S. and 16 worldwide because of the defect. More than 180 have been injured.
Under the deal, Takata will pay a $25 million criminal fine, $125 million to individuals injured
by the air bags and $850 million to automakers that purchased the inflators.
A federal judge will be asked to appoint attorney Kenneth Feinberg to distribute restitution payments.
Payments to individuals must be made soon. Money due to automakers must be paid within five days of Takata’s anticipated sale or merger. Takata is expected to be sold to another auto supplier or investor this year.
“Automotive suppliers who sell products that are supposed to protect consumers from injury or death must put safety ahead of profits,” said Barbara McQuade, the U.S. attorney in Detroit, whose office worked on a two-year investigation into the company. “If they choose instead to engage in fraud, we will hold accountable the individuals and business entities who are responsible.”
The Justice Department was criticized for failing to charge any individuals in earlier high-profile cases against automakers General Motors and Toyota. Now it’s done so twice in one week. Prosecutors disclosed the indictment of six Volkswagen executives Wednesday when they announced a settlement of a criminal probe into the German car company’s emissions-cheating scheme.
On Friday, prosecutors unsealed a Detroit federal grand jury indictment of three former Takata executives, Shinichi Tanaka, Hideo Nakajima and Tsuneo Chikaraishi. All were suspended by the company last year. The Japanese company has its U.S. headquarters in the Detroit suburb of Auburn Hills.
According to an indictment, as early as 2000 the trio falsified and altered reports to hide from automakers tests that showed the inflators could rupture or otherwise fail to meet specifications. They were charged with six counts of conspiracy and wire fraud. Takata was charged separately with one count of wire fraud. All three worked in Japan and at Takata’s U.S. operations.
“Defendants commonly referred to the removal or alteration of unfavorable test data that was to be provided to Takata customers as ‘XX-ing’ the data,” the indictment says, adding that Nakajima said in a June 2005 email that they had no choice but to manipulate test data, and that they needed to “cross the bridge together.”
McQuade said Takata wanted to make a profit on air bags “knowing that they were creating a risk for the end user, soccer moms like me who drives around in my Ford Edge with my kids, who at any moment could get involved in a fender-bender and send a metal projectile into my face. The risk that they allowed to happen is really reprehensible.”