Mark Whitacre, a rising star at Decatur, Illinois, based Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) in the early 1990s, blows the whistle on the companyâs price-fixing tactics at the urging of his wife Ginger.[3][4]
One night in November 1992, Whitacre confesses to FBI special agent Brian Shepard that ADM executivesâincluding Whitacre himselfâhad routinely met with competitors to fix the price of lysine, an additive used in the commercial livestock industry. Whitacre secretly gathers hundreds of hours of video and audio over several years to present to the FBI.[3][5][6] He assists in gathering evidence by clandestinely taping the companyâs activity in business meetings at various locations around the globe such as Tokyo, Paris, Mexico City, and Hong Kong, eventually collecting enough evidence of collaboration and conspiracy to warrant a raid of ADM.
Whitacreâs good deed dovetails with his own major infractions, while his internal, secret struggle with bipolar disorder seems to take over his exploits.[3][7] The bulk of the film focuses on Whitacre's meltdown resulting from the pressures of wearing a wire and organizing surveillance for the FBI for three years, instigated by Whitacre's reaction, in increasingly manic overlays, to various trivial magazine articles he reads. In a stunning turn of events immediately following the covert portion of the case, headlines around the world report Whitacre had embezzled $9 million from his own company during the same period of time he was secretly working with the FBI and taping his co-workers, while simultaneously aiming to be elected as ADM CEO following the arrest and conviction of the remaining upper management members.[3] In the ensuing chaos, Whitacre appears to shift his trust and randomly destabilize his relationships with Special Agents Shepard and Herndon and numerous attorneys in the process.
Authorities at ADM begin investigating the forged papertrail Whitacre had built to cover his own deeds. After being confronted with evidence of his fraud, Whitacre's defensive claims begin to spiral out of control, including an accusation of assault and battery against Agent Shepard and the FBI, which had made a substantial move to distance their case from Whitacre entirely. Because of this major infraction and Whitacreâs bizarre behavior, he is sentenced to a prison term three times as long as that meted out to the white-collar criminals he helped to catch.[3] In the epilogue, Agent Herndon visits Whitacre in prison as he videotapes a futile appeal to seek a presidential pardon. Overweight, balding and psychologically beaten after his years long ordeal, Whitacre is eventually released from prison, with his wife Ginger waiting to greet him.
What is the product that was price fixed?
lysine