Kobe Steel Scandal Grows to Include Subsidiaries
- 7 years ago
Kobe Steel Scandal Grows to Include Subsidiaries
TOKYO — A scandal about falsified quality data at Kobe Steel expanded on Friday, as the Japanese steel maker said nine subsidiaries,
including several outside Japan, had either failed to carry out required product checks or lied about the results.
Including products sold by the subsidiaries, Kobe Steel said it now estimated
that it had shipped substandard or potentially substandard materials to 500 customers, up from an initial estimate of 200.
Kobe Steel said that in some cases the tests had not been carried out, and
that in other cases employees had recorded fake results to make it seem as though the products met customers’ standards when they did not
“We are trying to understand how this could possibly happen at so many subsidiaries, including
overseas,” Kobe Steel’s chief executive, Hiroya Kawasaki, said at a news conference.
Mr. Kawasaki repeated a promise to complete in two weeks an investigation into potential safety hazards related to the data falsification,
and to deliver in a month the results of a broader examination of the company’s failings, which now look systemic and global.
TOKYO — A scandal about falsified quality data at Kobe Steel expanded on Friday, as the Japanese steel maker said nine subsidiaries,
including several outside Japan, had either failed to carry out required product checks or lied about the results.
Including products sold by the subsidiaries, Kobe Steel said it now estimated
that it had shipped substandard or potentially substandard materials to 500 customers, up from an initial estimate of 200.
Kobe Steel said that in some cases the tests had not been carried out, and
that in other cases employees had recorded fake results to make it seem as though the products met customers’ standards when they did not
“We are trying to understand how this could possibly happen at so many subsidiaries, including
overseas,” Kobe Steel’s chief executive, Hiroya Kawasaki, said at a news conference.
Mr. Kawasaki repeated a promise to complete in two weeks an investigation into potential safety hazards related to the data falsification,
and to deliver in a month the results of a broader examination of the company’s failings, which now look systemic and global.