Japanese held

New Delhi, Dec. 21: Delhi Interpol has arrested a Japanese national wanted in a Texas financial irregularities case.

Tamon Tanabe, said to be in his 40s, was arrested in Delhi a week ago while on the run from a US dragnet. He now faces extradition proceedings, which have been initiated in a local court.

The Texas Northern District court had indicted Tanabe, the associate general manager of a Japanese firm, on August 23 last year for hatching a conspiracy with some colleagues “to suppress and restrain competition by fixing the price of and allocating customers” for his firm’s products in the US and elsewhere”.

Tanabe was the associate general manager of the seasoning and related products’ department, Seasoning and Edible Oil Division, a Japanese concern that distributes nucleotides in the US and other countries.

Nucleotides are organic compounds used to enhance flavour of foods.

The conspiracy was hatched during the two years beginning August 1994.

Tanabe has been regularly appearing before additional chief metropolitan magistrate V.K. Maheshwari in Patiala House courts after his arrest. He applied for interim bail in Maheshwari’s court on Friday.

The Texas district court had observed that various individuals and corporations — not made defendants in the indictment — participated as conspirators in the offence charged under section 1 of the Sherman Act.

Listing the charges against Tanabe, the court said that he participated in meetings and conversations to discuss the prices and volumes of nucleotides sold in the US.

Tanabe also agreed to “charge prices at specified levels and otherwise to fix, increase and maintain prices of nucleotides”.

He not only allocated customers for flavour enhancers among the corporate conspirators, he issued price announcements and price quotation lists in accordance with the agreements reached, the court order said.