Brasília, September 17, 2025 – Brazil’s Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE) has fined Japanese company NHK Spring Co. Ltd. and five individuals R$4.73m ($886,556) for participating in a global cartel in the market for hard disk drive (HDD) suspension assemblies.
The ruling, issued unanimously by CADE’s administrative Tribunal, found that the company colluded with competitors between 2003 and 2016 to fix prices, divide markets, and share sensitive commercial information. Suspension assemblies are critical HDD components, responsible for positioning the read/write head on the rapidly spinning disk surface.
The investigation was launched in 2018 following a Leniency Agreement that provided key evidence. According to Reporting Commissioner Victor Oliveira Fernandes, the case file contained a vast record of emails and message exchanges directly between rival companies—going well beyond testimonial evidence and demonstrating systematic, horizontal coordination.
Fernandes noted that the cartel had potential effects on the Brazilian market, both through direct imports of HDD components and indirectly via finished HDDs embedded in notebooks and laptops. He stressed that even in the absence of local sourcing, the harmful impact of international collusion on Brazilian consumers and manufacturers was clear.
The Tribunal imposed a fine of R$4.4m ($824,634) on NHK Spring Co. Ltd. In addition, five executives involved in the scheme were fined a combined R$330,400 ($61,922).
