Bumble Bee Ex-CEO Claims Ignorance of Price Fixing at Trial End

Bumble Bee Foods LLC’s former Chief Executive Officer Chris Lischewski is pleading ignorance of any plans to fix prices of canned tuna in the U.S. in an attempt to persuade a jury to acquit him of criminal charges.

But prosecutors claim he was part of a conspiracy, which was described to alleged coconspirators as a “peace proposal,” to boost prices in order to meet earnings targets set by Bumble Bee’s 2010 sale to Lion Capital.

The thinly-veiled plan included coded language between executives at Bumble Bee and Starkist Co. to fix prices by “setting their own secret rules,” in which...