Air France-KLM, Cathay Pacific Airways, Martinair and SAS Group have all agreed with the US Dept. of Justice (DOJ) to enter guilty pleas in a US court and pay criminal fines "for participating in a multi-year conspiracy to fix prices for air cargo rates," according to a DOJ statement yesterday.

AF-KLM will pay the largest amount - $350 million, while Cathay has agreed to pay $60 million, Martinair $42 million and SAS $52 million.

The agreement brings the total amount of fines imposed by the office in its investigation into air cargo antitrust violations to a total of $1.27 billion. This is also the highest fine ever imposed by the antitrust division in one investigation.

British Airways, Korean Air, Japan Airlines and Qantas have been implicated earlier and have already paid fines.

Meanwhile, chiefs of all three companies issued carefully worded statements. AF-KLM chairman and CEO, Jean-Cyril Spinetta, said the company has "taken thorough steps across the organization to prevent recurrence."

SAS president and CEO, Mats Jansson, said there are "various control mechanisms" in place to prevent antitrust violations, adding that it was "very unfortunate and a serious problem that our policies were not fully observed in this case."

Cathay CEO, Tony Tyler, said that airline "carefully considered all applicable factors and concluded that entering into this agreement at this time presents the best resolution to the investigation," adding that "it transpired that some of our actions relating to shipments from Hong Kong to the US were in conflict with US antitrust laws, and we very much regret this."

The DOJ said that "the airlines each engaged in a conspiracy to suppress and eliminate competition by fixing the cargo rates charged to customers for international air shipments. The charged conduct affected billions of dollars of consumer and other goods. . .shipped by these airlines and their competitors."

The DOJ's investigation includes Air Canada and El Al, which have recently said that they too have made provisions for possible settlements.

Investigations into alleged anticompetitive airfreight rate practices are also being carried out by the EU and other government agencies throughout the world.