Gibson Guitar and US Department of Justice reach settlement agreement

The US Department of Justice announced today (6 August) that the Gibson Guitar Corporation has entered into an agreement to resolve the investigation into whether the company used illegally harvested wood and ebony, thereby violating the Lacey Act. Under the agreement, Gibson will pay a $300,000 penalty, plus a $50,000 donation to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to help promote conservation of protected trees. In addition, according to a press release issued by the Department of Justice, "Gibson will also implement a compliance program designed to strengthen its compliance controls and procedures. In related civil forfeiture actions, Gibson will withdraw its claims to the wood seized in the course of the criminal investigation, including Madagascar ebony from shipments with a total invoice value of $261,844. During the yearlong investigation, Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz maintained that the company was innocent of any wrongdoing. In a August 2011 press conference, he stated, "We feel totally abused. We believe the arrogance of federal power is impacting me personally, our company personally, and the employees in Tennessee – and it's just plain wrong." Responding to the agreement today, Juszkiewicz said, "We felt compelled to settle as the costs of proving our case at trial would have cost millions of dollars and taken a very long time to resolve. This allows us to get back to the business of making guitars. An important part of the settlement is that we are getting back the materials seized in a second armed raid on our factories and we have formal acknowledgement that we can continue to source rosewood and ebony fingerboards from India, as we have done for many decades."...more

This is the "justice" you get from the feds - spend millions of dollars on attorneys or settle.

For background on this case see my posts:

Gibson Guitars And The Lacey Act Misused

GuitarGate: Three House Committee Chairs criticize Memphis and Nashville raids on Gibson Guitar

CEO of Gibson Guitar a Republican donor; Democrat competitor uses same wood