Former executive of Toyota supplier arrested for bribing Chinese officials

Want China Times, Staff Reporter 2013-09-16

A Toyota stand at the International Automobile Industry Exhibition in
Shanghai on April 20. (Photo/CNS)

China's sweeping anti-graft campaign may extend to the motor industry with the arrest of a former Japanese executive of a Toyota parts supplier in Japan, allegedly for bribing Chinese officials, reports the Chinese-language China Business Journal.

Takehisa Terada, 68, the former senior managing director of Futaba Industrial, a parts manufacturer for Japanese motor giant Toyota, was arrested last week in Japan's Aichi prefecture by local authorities.

Terada was Fubata's China office equipment director and legal representative between 2003 and 2009. In December 2007, when Futaba was accused of shady business dealings in its factory at the city of Dongguan in southern China's Guangdong province, Terada was said to have bribed a customs officer with 450,000 yen (US$4,500) and a 150,000 yen (US$1,500) handbag.

He has also been accused of bribing four other officials a total of 16 times, with the amount of money involved totaling more than 50 million yuan (US$505,500).

"The arrest is regrettable and we greatly apologize for the issue," Futaba said in a company statement. According to the manufacturer, Terada resigned in March 2009 after giving "inappropriate financial support" to Business Design Laboratory, a Japanese company that researches and develops robots.

Toyota owns 12% of stock in Futaba, though it does not have any control over Futaba's management decisions.

Terada's arrest could potentially spark a new round of anti-graft investigations in China's motor vehicle industry. Since Communist Party leader and Chinese president Xi Jinping vowed to crack down on corruption at the beginning of the year, authorities have already completed a series of probes into the country's pharmaceutical and oil sectors and they have made a number of high profile arrests.

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