Four former high-level officials of a Japanese firm and its subsidiary company were indicted yesterday on charges of inflating costs for supporting recovery and disposal of chemical weapons abandoned in China, Kyodo News reported (see GSN, May 13).
The indicted suspects include former Pacific Consultants International president Masayoshi Taga and former firm executive Tsutomu Kurihara, along with one-time Abandoned Chemical Weapons Disposal Corp. chief Hiroyuki Endo.
The men are suspected of running up the charge for one project to the tune of $1.2 million, Kyodo reported. The indictment says the suspects failed to obtain government consent before outsourcing some weapons reclamation work in fiscal 2004 and submitted bills containing unapproved expenses for subcontracting engineers.
Authorities are looking for similar examples of malfeasance in fiscal years 2005 and 2006. Pacific Consultants International is also suspected of income tax evasion and could face a government lawsuit for the unauthorized fees.
Indictments have already been handed down against two other former PCI presidents related to the chemical weapons project. Tokyo and Beijing are working to eliminate hundreds of thousands of Japanese chemical munitions abandoned in China following World War II (Kyodo News, June 3).