User:DeLarge/recall

The Mitsubishi Motors recall cover up is a corporate scandal involving an attempt by Japanese automaker Mitsubishi Motors Corporation to hide the number of reported faults affecting its vehicles from the Japanese Ministry of Transport. After coming to light in 2000, the deception was discovered to have extended back as far as 1977.

The emergence of the cover up, which affected both passenger cars produced by Mitsubishi Motors and commercial vehicles produced by Mitsubishi Fuso Truck and Bus Corporation, forced the company to recall over two million vehicles, depressed its stock price sufficiently to compromise its alliance with DaimlerChrysler, and led to the resignation of the chairman and the arrest of 26 members of staff. It has been labelled "one of the largest corporate scandals in Japanese history".

Initial revelations

In July 2000, the Japanese Transport Ministry raided the offices of Mitsubishi and discovered documents detailing unreported customer complaints hidden in a locker, in violation of a Japanese law introduced in 1969 described as "The hiding of recallable cases". There was no indication at the time that senior management were aware of or involved in the deception, and nor was it suggested that injuries or deaths had been caused by the reported faults. 500,000 vehicles were recalled for repair, all of them within the Japanese domestic market. However, the company's stock price still fell by 13 percent on the news.

After a second raid, on Mitsubishi's headquarters, factories, and the homes of two of its executives was undertaken by the Japanese police, Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun reported that up to 64,000 customer complaints may have been concealed, extending as far back as 1977. Almost a million vehicles, including nearly 250,000 exported worldwide, were recalled to check for possible failures in the brakes, clutches, and fuel lines, and this time Mitsubishi management was implicated. The stock price fell a further 12 percent, and began to threaten the recently negotiated alliance with U.S.-German automaker DaimlerChrysler.

Original text

Mitsubishi was twice forced to admit to systematically covering up defect problems in its vehicles. Four defects were first publicized in 2000, but in 2004 it confessed to 26 more going back as far as 1977, including failing brakes, fuel leaks and malfunctioning clutches. The effect on the company was catastrophic, forcing it to recall 163,707 cars (156,433 in Japan and 7,274 overseas) for free repair. Further recalls by Fuso truck & bus brought the total number of vehicles requiring repair to almost one million. The affair led to the resignation and subsequent arrest of president Kawasoe, along with 23 other employees who were also implicated. Three of them have since been acquitted, with the judge stating that there was no official request from the Transport Ministry ordering them to submit a defect report.

External link

• "Mitsubishi's Shame", Michael Schuman, TIME, June 28 2004
• "A setting sun?", Neil Weinberg, Forbes, November 1998
• "Mitsubishi Motors President to step down", Peter Martin, The World Today, ABC Radio, September 1 2000 (archived transcript)
• "Mitsubishi seeks damages from former heads", Automotive World, March 31 2005
• "Lemonade time at Mitsubishi - Mitsubishi Motors Corp. president Takemune Kimura and chairman Hirozuka Nakamura to resign in wake of arrest of company executives for paying extortionists", Ward's AutoWorld, December 1997
• "Mitsubishi Motors Seeks Damages From Ex-Officials", Todd Zaun, The New York Times, March 31 2005

Category:Mitsubishi Motors Category:Corporate scandals

ja:三菱リコール隠し