Bumble Bee Foods’ woes continue to mount as its CEO, Christopher Lischewski, has been indicted for price fixing. The indictment alleges that Lischewski participated in the price fixing conspiracy from approximately November 2010 until about December 2013. Lischewski is not the first Bumble Bee executive to be charged: in late 2016 and early 2017, two Bumble Bee Senior Vice Presidents pled guilty to price fixing, and in May 2017, Bumble Bee agreed to pay $25 million in fines for price fixing.
As we noted at the initiation of a private follow-on litigation, the original conspiracy was discovered when Thai Union Group attempted to acquire Bumble Bee in 2015—during that investigation, the Department of Justice found evidence of a potential price fixing conspiracy in the packaged tuna industry.