Tokyo police on Tuesday arrested two former Mitsui & Co. employees and a former executive of a Mitsui subsidiary on suspicion of fabricating test data to obtain official approval for a diesel particulate filter.
Mitsui sold some 21,500 filters that were approved based on the false data. The metropolitan and neighboring prefectural governments forked out roughly 7 billion yen in subsidies for the trucking firms and other entities that purchased the Mitsui DPFs.
Arrested by the Metropolitan Police Department on fraud allegations were Yuji Shiro, 47, a former Mitsui employee who headed the trading firm's office for high-technology business, Takashi Noda, 29, also a former Mitsui official, and Tetsuro Toyoda, 47, a former vice president of PUREarth Inc., a Mitsui subsidiary that makes the devices.