Police Tuesday interrogated the president of Nisso Ltd., an industrial-waste disposal company in Oyama, Tochigi Prefecture, in connection with the firm's illegal export of toxic waste to the Philippines last year.
Police said Hiromi Ito, 50, was arrested Monday night in Niigata and taken to the Oyama Police Station, where Tochigi and Nagano prefectural police have jointly set up a squad to investigate the case.
Ito initially refused to answer investigators' questions but later acknowledged that he exported industrial waste to the Philippines in 1999, according to police sources.
Ito is suspected of exporting about 2,160 tons of industrial waste, including hazardous medical waste, to the Philippines in July and October, police said.
Ito allegedly violated the Foreign Trade Control Law by falsely claiming the waste was paper for recycling when he applied for the trade minister's permission for the shipments, police said. The law requires the minister's permission for certain types of export.
Police had earlier considered applying for the first time a domestic law enacted in line with the 1989 Basel Convention on the transportation of harmful waste.
But investigators decided not to seek Ito's arrest under that law because the harmful medical waste accounted for only a small proportion of the shipments, they said.
The garbage was shipped back from the Philippines to Japan in early January. The return shipment was paid for by the Japanese government because Nisso had failed.
Police had earlier placed Ito on a wanted list in connection with a separate case involving a suspected violation of a waste disposal law.