Japan Arrests Five for Illegal Equipment Exports

Tokyo police have arrested five executives and employees of a Japanese precision equipment manufacturing firm on suspicion of illegally exporting machinery that could be used to produce nuclear weapons, officials announced today (see GSN, Feb. 13).

Kazusaku Tezuka, president of Mitutoyo Corp., joined four other company staffers under arrest after authorities found evidence that the firm in 2001 improperly shipped two three-dimensional measuring devices to a subsidiary in Malaysia.  The firm was also discovered to have illegally shipped similar equipment to Japanese firms in Thailand and China the same year, Kyodo News reported.

Three-dimensional measuring machines can map cylindrical shapes with great accuracy and cannot be exported without government approval, according to officials from the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry.  The machines can help to produce centrifuges used to enrich uranium, said ministry official Hiroyuki Murakami.

Mitutoyo equipment was reportedly found in Libya after that nation revealed a long-time nuclear-weapon program and helped to uncover the international nuclear smuggling network led by former top Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, according to the Associated Press.  The Khan network used a Malaysian firm that was found to have purchased equipment from Mitutoyo, Kyodo News reported (Carl Freire, Associated Press/Washington Post, Aug. 25).

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