Subject: [cwj 88] Japan police raid Mitsubishi Motors Corp
From: Corporate Watch in Japanese <cwj@corpwatch.org>
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2000 13:18:36 -0700
Seq: 88
Japan police raid Mitsubishi Motors Corp Business Recorder TOKYO (August 28) : Japanese police investigators raided the offices of Mitsubishi Motors Corp on Sunday on suspicion of concealing customer complaints and recalls from government inspectors for decades, Kyodo news agency reported. The police search - a typical move in cases of suspected legal violations - came after the car maker's admission last week that week it had systematically covered up customer complaints for 20 years. Transport Minister Hajime Morita said on Friday that the ministry was considering filing a complaint against the company with the Tokyo Metropolitan Police and that a decision would be made next month. Last month, the ministry - acting on a tip-off - found unreported consumer complaints in a company locker room, leading the company to recall more than half a million vehicles. Announcing the results of an internal probe last Tuesday, Mitsubishi said it would widen the recall to almost 620,000 vehicles. It has also offered to check 200,000 other vehicles. The firm, in which German-US auto giant DaimlerChrysler has agreed to buy a 34 percent stake, estimates the recall cost to be 7.5 billion yen ($70.13 million). Kyodo said that police searched Mitsubishi's headquarters and four other offices seeking evidence of whether it had committed illegal acts by failing to report the bulk of the complaints to the government. Analysts have said they expect the long-term impact of the scandal to be small, as a similar incident at Subaru-brand maker Fuji Heavy Industries in 1998 resulted in a tiny fine and had little effect on sales. They also differentiate it from Bridgestone Corp's recall of 6.5 million tyres. US safety regulators say tyres made by Bridgestone's US subsidiary Firestone may be linked to 62 deaths. Mitsubishi cars affected by the recall, in contrast, have been tied to one accident in which two people suffered whiplash when a Mitsubishi Montero sports utility with a brake problem hit their car. On Friday, Mitsubishi Motors denied a report that company president Katsuhiko Kawasoe was likely to resign over the affair. The daily Yomiuri Shimbun said that Kawasoe was coming under increasing pressure to quit as the Transport Ministry was likely to ask police to press charges against the company. Kawasoe told reporters last week that he would not quit and considered it his task to rebuild the company.-Reuters Copyright 2000 Reuters (Published under arrangements with Reuters) FAIR USE NOTICE. This document contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Corporate Watch in Japanese is making this article available in our efforts to advance understanding of ecological sustainability, human rights, economic democracy and social justice issues. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. ------------------------------------- Corporate Watch in Japanese Transnational Resource and Action Center (TRAC) P.O. Box 29344 San Francisco, CA 94129 USA Tel: 1-415-561-6472 Fax: 1-415-561-6493 Email: cwj@corpwatch.org URL: http://www.corpwatch-jp.org ------------------------------------- ______________________ The Corporate Watch in Japanese http://www.corpwatch.org/japan (CWJ) mailing list is a moderated email list in English designed to connect activists campaigning against Japanese corporations and investments around the world. * To unsubscribe from the CWJ mailing list, send an email to majordomo@jca.apc.org with text "unsubscribe cwj". To subscribe to the CWJ mailing list, send a message to majordomo@jca.apc.org with the text "subscribe cwj" * The CWJ mailing list is NOT intended for wide distribution. If you would like to post messages from this list somewhere else, we ask that you first contact us at cwj@corpwatch.org ______________________