Four to Admit Guilt in Chip Price Fixing

Four executives from Hynix Semiconductor Inc., a South Korean microchip maker, agreed Wednesday to plead guilty to participating in a scheme to fix the price of computer memory chips, the U.S. Justice Department said.

The executives agreed to pay fines of $250,000 each, assist in further prosecutions and serve jail terms between five and eight months for conspiring to raise the price of dynamic random access memory from 1999 to 2002.

It’s the latest development in a long-running Justice Department investigation that has led to guilty pleas from four chip companies -- Hynix, Samsung Electronics Co., Elpida Memory Inc. and Infineon Technologies -- and fines totaling more than $730 million.

The Hynix executives who agreed to plead guilty were identified as D.S. Kim, general manager of worldwide sales and marketing; C.K. Chung, director of global strategic account sales; K.C. Suh, senior manager for memory product marketing; and C.Y. Choi, general manager of marketing and sales support.

Four Infineon executives have already pleaded guilty, serving jail terms from four to six months and paying fines of $250,000 each. A sales manager for Micron Technology Inc. also pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice for withholding and altering documents related to the investigation.

Prosecutors say the global conspiracy drove up the price of DRAM chips, the standard technology for storing and retrieving information in computers and a variety of electronic devices.

Victims included computer makers Dell Inc., the former Compaq Computer Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., Apple Computer Inc., IBM Corp. and Gateway Inc.