DOJ charges 7 Chinese execs, 4 companies in alleged conspiracy that drove up cost of global shipping

The Justice Department has indicted seven Chinese executives and four of the world's largest shipping container manufacturers for allegedly conspiring to restrict the output of all the world's unrefrigerated shipping containers during the COVID pandemic, which drove up the shipping costs for billions of dollars of commerce. 

Between a period spanning roughly November 2019 to January 2024, the Justice Department alleges, the suspects doubled the cost of the containers, which increased the manufacturers' profits by 100-fold during the 2020 pandemic. 

According to the superseding indictment, filed in January, Vick Nam Hing Ma, 54, was arrested in April in France, and his extradition to the United States is pending. The indictment also names 10 of Ma's alleged co-conspirators. 

"This Department of Justice is ensuring that when American pocketbooks are pilfered, accountability will follow," Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said in a statement Tuesday. 

"And yet the last administration saw fit to prioritize the weaponization of the Department through novel criminal prosecution theories rather than focus on criminal actors most responsible for manipulating markets to profit from a global pandemic."