Buyers for Kraft Foods and PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay have admitted accepting bribes in return for awarding supply contracts to tomato company SK Foods.
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Former Kraft purchasing manager, Robert Watson, pled guilty to charges that he accepted bribes of US$158,000 in a Sacramento court this week.
Prosecutors said Watson purchased 230m pounds of processed tomato products for Kraft from SK Foods at inflated prices between 2004 and 2008.
Meanwhile, former Frito-Lay purchaser James Wahl has admitted to prosecutors that he accepted bribes to the order of $160,000, a spokesperson for the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California in Sacramento confirmed to just-food.
As part of the same investigation, in December Randall Lee Rahal, the owner of wholesaler Intramark USA, plead guilty to charges that he paid bribes to win and keep supply contracts for SK Foods and to obtain information about competitors’ bids.
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By GlobalDataRahal worked as a broker for SK Foods, a Monterey-based tomato grower and processor. According to the charges, Rahal regularly bribed the purchasing agents of SK Foods’ customers, including Watson and Wahl.
The charges were brought as part of a joint investigation by the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California, the Department of Justice Antitrust Division’s San Francisco Field Office, the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Sacramento and the Internal Revenue Service.
The US Attorney’s office spokesperson declined to comment on whether further charges relating to the purchasing agents of other SK Foods’ customers are to follow.
Frito-Lay and Kraft were not immediately available for comment.
