Horkos employees arrested FEFTL violation

On March 4, 2009, METI accused Machine Tool manufacture, Horkos, of violation of FEFTL, as they exported high precision machine tool without export license to South Korea and China. This incident was reported on July 31 last year, and have been investigated by police. It was reported yesterday, 4 employees were arrested by violation of FEFTL. All of these employees are not top management, but manager or assistant manager level who were involved in false classification of their machine tool. (Overseas sales manager, manufactuirng manager, quality control manager etc.) They intentionally declared their machine tool's specification "lower" than it is, because the license application to METI is very complicated, stressful, troublesome and wanted to minimize the lead time of business. The actual technical specification was not disclosed to METI or Customs, but they internally kept "real specification" in the company and advised to clients as sales point!

According to METI website, their machine is classified as category 2-(12) of Export Trade Control Order appendix 1. Its description is "Nuclear Weapons, Numerically controlled machine tools". Or, it is equivalent to US ECCN 2B001 and 2B201. The export of this item require export license by METI regardless of its destination, to all countries.

The penalty of export violation will be much more severe by amendment of FEFTL this year.
Apparently, this violation incident is one of the reason METI impose tighten export control.

(Source: METI web site http://www.meti.go.jp/policy/anpo/kanri/topics/kokuhatsu/main.html)
(Horkos web site: http://www.horkos.co.jp/ )