SAN FRANCISCO — Following the criminal indictment Wednesday of Bumble Bee Foods CEO Chris Lischewski on price-fixing charges, the tuna industry magnate's attorney insisted he “will be found not guilty.”

John Keker of the San Francisco litigation firm Keker, Van Nest & Peters is representing Lischewski in the case, and in a statement called the executive a “decent and honorable man” who is “innocent of any wrongdoing.”

“We are disappointed by the [Department of Justice's] decision to charge him with criminal conduct,” Keker added. “When the facts are known and the truth emerges, Mr. Lischewski will be found not guilty, and that vindication will rightfully restore his good name.”

According to the indictment, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Wednesday, Lischewski conspired to fix prices for packaged seafood between 2010 and 2013. The charges carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a fine of $1 million.

“The Antitrust Division is committed to prosecuting senior executives who unjustly profit at the expense of their customers,” Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim of the Justice Department's Antitrust Division said in a statement announcing the indictment.

“American consumers deserve free enterprise, not fixed prices, so the department will not tolerate crimes like the one charged in today's indictment,” Delrahim added.

Lischewski is the fourth person to be charged as part of the ongoing federal antitrust investigation into the packaged seafood industry. Other senior industry executives have pleaded guilty, and Bumble Bee Foods pleaded guilty as a corporate defendant last year.

There have also been a wave of civil suits brought against Bumble Bee, StarKist and Chicken of the Sea parent company Tri-Union Seafoods, which have been moving forward in federal court in San Diego.