More details have been revealed about a price fixing case which involves eight international ocean freight shipping companies operating in China.
The companies include Japan's NYK Line and "K" Line, and Chile's CSAV.
The eight companies were fined 407 million yuan, nearly 63 million dollars, by China's National Development and Reform Commission.
Chen Mei, an official with the commission's Anti-Monopoly Department, says the investigation started in 2012, when some of the companies voluntarily confessed to price-fixing in the United States.
The official notes that it was not until August, 2014, that the three Japanese enterprises confessed their crimes to the Anti-Monopoly Department.
"The first enterprise that confessed its crime gave us a lot of evidence about how it communicated with competitors, for example, it offered hand-written notes they took via phone communication, their e-mail exchanges, and some receipts from business trips. All these could directly prove the communication between them."
After more than a year of investigations, authorities found the companies involved had exercised price manipulation for shipping vehicles and engineering machinery on major lines for at least four years.
The NDRC imposed fines of four to nine percent of the companies' revenues of their related China businesses in 2014.
EUKOR Car Carriers Inc. received the highest fine - 284 million yuan.
The company released an online statement saying it will accept the decision.
