Brussels, 02/10/2001 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission has slapped fines for a total of 57.53 million euro on Archer Daniels Midmands Company Inc (United States), Akso Nobel NV (Netherlands) Avebve BA (Netherlands), Fujisawa Pharmaceuticals Company Ltd (Japan), Jungbunzlauer AG (Switzerland) and Roquette Freres SA (France), for having fixed sodium gluconate prices, a chemical product used for cleaning metal and glass. This decision was taken at the end of an in-depth investigation began in 1997 and that demonstrated that between 1987 and 1995, the six companies, which together represented almost all world production, had created a cartel between them consisting in fixing the price of sodium gluconate and sharing out the market in question. The Commission states that the companies co-operated in the investigation by forwarding part of the proof of the existence of the cartel. It thus reduced the amount of the fines inflicted on each of the companies, according to different proportions calculated according to the different levels of co-operation.