It added that Rhone-Poulenc of France has been cooperating with the department in the investigation under the "corporate leniency programme," which allow a company to qualify for protection from prosecution if it reports its involvement in a crime.

Gary Spratling, an official in the antitrust division of the Justice Department revealed that Rhone Poulenc which conspired with the above two companies in the past, helped them break into "the most pervasive and harmful criminal conspiracy ever uncovered",

"These companies hurt the pocketbook of virtually every American, anyone who took a vitamin, drank a glass of milk or had a bowl of cereal," he said.

The companies were accused of holding regular meetings and conversations from January 1990 to February 1999 to agree on prices and on how the international vitamin market was to be divided among them.

"Virtually every American consumer paid artificially inflated prices for vitamins and vitamin-enriched foods in order to feed the greed of these conspirators who pocketed millions of dollars in tainted profits,"