Horkos sanctioned export prohibition for 5 months

According to the News Release of METI on August 14, METI announced the administrative sanction of prohibition of export to Horkos.
As reported in this blog, Horkos Corp., high precision machine tool manufacturer in Japan, violated export control regulation by exporting license required high specification machine tool without export license of METI to South Korea and China.
http://japantradecompliance.blogspot.com/2009/03/horkos-employees-arrested-by-feftl.html

In addition to criminal prosecution(*), METI imposed administrative sanction to Horkos of prohibition of export as ALL of their products to ALL countries for 5 months (from August 21, 2009 to January 21, 2010). This sanction is based on the Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Law ("FEFTL") Article 53.

This penalty of export prohibition is severe penalty for a machine tool company who depend on their revenue in export.

(*) In March 2009, METI prosecuted Horkos and was convicted as guilty in July 2009.
The penalty amount is JPY47,000,000 and the CEO and former employees are sentenced as imprisonment of 1 year to 2 years half (3 years suspended sentence).

(Source: http://www.meti.go.jp/press/20090814003/20090814003.pdf )