TotalFinaElf chemicals boss admits to price fixing

A senior executive of the French oil giant TotalFinaElf has pleaded guilty to an international conspiracy to fix prices and block competition in the chemicals market.

Tried by the US Department of Justice (DoJ), Jacques Jourdan, who worked for the company's chemicals arm, Elf Atochem, faces a 90-day prison sentence and a $50,000 (£33,000) fine.

Jourdan is the third executive to plead guilty to a price-fixing ring in the market for monochloroacetic acid. The chemical is used in the manufacture of pharmaceuticals, herbicides and plastics.

Jourdan was found to have been involved in fixing US prices with other producers between 1997 and 1999. The prosecution is the latest to come out of a joint investigation by the DoJ's antitrust division and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in San Francisco into the manipulation of the acid market.

"We are committed to investigating and prosecuting all individuals, whether US or foreign citizens, who engage in illegal conspiracies that harm American businesses and consumers," said Charles James, assistant attorney general in charge of the DoJ's antitrust division.

In April, another Elf Atochem executive, Patrick Stainton, was also sentenced to a 90-day prison sentence and fined $50,000.

A month earlier, Elf Atochem agreed to pay $5m (£3.3m) in criminal fines for conspiring to fix prices.

Dutch chemical giant Akzo Nobel was the first company to be exposed in the acid scandal. In June 2001 it pleaded guilty and was ordered to pay a $12m (£7.9m) fine. A month later, Erik Anders Brostrom, an Akzo Nobel executive, pleaded guilty to his role in the conspiracy and was sentenced to three months in prison and fined $20,000 (£13,000).

The price fixing in the acid market is yet another scandal inherited by TotalFina when it bought the former French state-owned Elf Aquitaine in 2000. Elf was subject to an exhaustive probe into shady dealings that took place at the company in the late 1980s and early 1990s.