United States v. Marubeni America Corporation and Hitachi Cable, Ltd.

The substantive issue is whether the criminal forfeiture provided by the Racketeering and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) is limited to interests “in an enterprise.” The district court held that it is. We affirm.

FACTS

Marubeni America Corporation (Marubeni) and Hitachi Cable, Ltd., (Hitachi) are engaged in the production and sales of electrical cable. Marubeni is incorporated in the United States. Hitachi is a Japanese corporation.

Anchorage Telephone Utility (ATU) is an instrumentality of the Municipality of Anchorage, Alaska. Between the spring of 1970 and September 1978, it invited bids on four contracts to supply it with telephone cable.

The government contends that Forrest Ellis, Marubeni’s local representative in Alaska, paid bribes to Richard McBride, an ATU official, for confidential bidding information on the four supply contracts. Marubeni and Hitachi allegedly used this information to underbid their competitors. The government asserts that the defendants lowered their bids by offering some types of cable at depressed prices, thereby making their package bids artificially low.

Based on their bids, Marubeni and Hitachi were awarded large parts of three supply…