One of the many vessels in the ghost fleet which passed through Townsville in recent weeks was the stand out vehicle carrier Talia , 199.95metres long x 32.5 metres , flying under the Bahamas flag . A considerable number of vehicle carriers pass through Townsville , some of them proven to have belonged to a criminal shipping cartel , which meant Australia was being slugged by price fixing of roll-on roll off transport costs .
As a matter of fact, the Norwegian line Wallenius Willhelmsen Logistics was fined $US 98.9 million , $130 million Australian ,when it pleaded guilty to cartel price fixing . The US Department of Justice reported four companies , including NYK ( Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha ) , the world's fourth biggest shipping group , seen in Townsville , had pleaded guilty to participating in a roll-n roll-off cartel and fined a total of $230 million .
An NYK executive was jailed for 15 months and the Japan Fair Trade Commission ordered the company pay a fine of 13 billion yen ( $160 million ) for fixing prices on routes which included between Japan and Australia . In 2017 the Australian Federal Court fined NYK $25 million for its involvement in fixing the price of car transport to Australia .
With information supplied by America , the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) a second Japanese company in the cartel , the K-Line, has pleaded guilty and will be sentenced in the near future .
Other cartels are under investigation in Australia with much information flooding into the ACCC, its operations to be extended.
