Hiroya Hirose, who works for NSK Ltd (>> Jtekt Corp), and Masakazu Iwami of Jtekt Corp (>> Jtekt Corp) were indicted on Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky on charges of conspiring to fix the prices of bearings sold to Toyota Motor Corp (>> Toyota Motor Corp), the department said.

In September, Jtekt and NSK agreed to plead guilty to price-fixing and to pay criminal fines.

Thirty auto parts makers have either pleaded guilty or agreed to plead guilty to price fixing or other violations of antitrust law. These include Toyoda Gosei Ltd, (>> TOYODA GOSEI CO., LTD.), Autoliv Inc (>> Autoliv Inc.), G.S Electech, Tokai Rika Co Ltd (>> TOKAI RIKA CO., LTD.) and TRW Deutschland Holding GmbH.

In addition, 46 people, including Hirose and Iwami, have been charged with price fixing as part of the probe, the department said.

In its indictment, the Justice Department said that Iwami and other unnamed co-conspirators began to rig bids to sell bearings to Toyota in about 2001, and that Hirose joined the conspiracy in 2006. It went until July 2011, the department said.

Efforts to reach Hirose and Iwami, who are based in Japan, through the companies were not immediately successful.

(Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Bill Trott, Bernard Orr)

By Diane Bartz