4 arrested in scandal over Japan's removal of WWII chemical weapons in China

Published: April 23, 2008

TOKYO: Tokyo prosecutors arrested four consulting company executives Wednesday in a high-profile corruption scandal involving Japan's removal of chemical weapons abandoned in China at the end of World War II.

Prosecutors allege Tamio Araki, former president of Pacific Consultants International, and three other company executives misused $1.17 million of government funds meant for the disposal of about 400,000 chemical weapons that Japanese troops left behind in China at the end of the war.

The men, who have not yet been formally charged, allegedly misappropriated funds through fake outsourcing to several subcontractors and other falsified expenses, prosecutors said in a statement.

The arrests are a major embarrassment for Japan's government and could further delay a massive war compensation project in which Tokyo has disbursed $223 million since 2004.

Japan is required to clean up the abandoned weapons under a 1997 international chemical weapons convention. China says poisons leaking from the weapons have killed about 2,000 people since 1945, compounding enduring resentment over Japan's wartime aggression.

The project is already behind schedule, with only 10 percent of the poisonous shells and canisters recovered, and Japan has been forced to extend the deadline for completing the disposal by five years to 2012.

Yoshinobu Abe, an official at the government office in charge of the project, said the arrests were an internal company problem and should not affect the project.

Northeast China was a hub of Japan's wartime aggression in Asia, and Tokyo used the area to stockpile chemical weapons produced in Japan.

In 2003, one person was killed and 43 others were injured when construction workers broke open a buried barrel of poison gas in the northeastern Chinese city of Qiqihar.