National

Chemical arms disposal pricey / China project hit for opaque management, exorbitant costs

The Yomiuri Shimbun

The aggravated breach of trust case of major consultancy firm Pacific Consultants International (PCI) has brought to light the opaque management of the nation's chemical weapon disposal project under way in China.

"I've no idea how much we need [to pay for the project]," said a senior official from the Cabinet Office section in charge of abandoned chemical weapon disposal, when The Yomiuri Shimbun asked about the possible total cost of the national project to dispose of munitions left behind in China during and after World War II.

Under the Chemical Weapon Convention, which Japan ratified in 1995, the nation was obliged to unearth all the chemical weapons abandoned by the Imperial Japanese Army on the Chinese mainland and render them harmless.

The total amount of funds the government has used to pay for the project, beginning with its launch in fiscal 1999 to fiscal 2006, has amounted to 47.1 billion yen.

However, most of the funding was used to research the project's basic planning framework, while construction of a plant has yet to start. It seems obvious it will take more than 100 billion yen just to build the plant.

Regarding the treatment of chemical weapons abandoned in the Haerbaling district of Jilin Province, northeast China, a person who has been involved in the project said, "The total cost is estimated to be hundreds of billion of yen."

Another estimate went as high as 1 trillion yen, the person added.

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A long way from completion

The Chemical Weapon Convention originally required Japan to complete the disposal project by April 2007.

But the project soon got delayed, because the Japanese "couldn't easily understand where the Chinese government wanted our disposal plant to be built and how it [the government] wanted our environmental measures to be. It was tough for us to decide even one item in discussions with the Chinese side," said a former government official who was involved in the undertaking.

In 2006, the deadline to complete the project was extended to April 2012. However, excavating and retrieving the weapons in Haerbaling, where 300,000 to 400,000 munitions are believed to have been buried, is not supposed to fully get under way until next year at the earliest.

According to multiple sources, it will take at least five years just to unearth the munitions. The sources expressed certainty they will have to extend the term again.

Abandoned Chemical Weapons Disposal Corp., a private firm established by PCI's parent company, has been in charge of placing orders related to the project on behalf of the Japanese government.

The Cabinet Office entrusted the project to PCI affiliate ACWDC, thinking the project-related operations would be expanded.

PCI had been involved in research and consulting for the project, making it and its affiliate ACWDC working on the same project--one placing orders and the other accepting them.

But no Cabinet Office staff members ever raised questions about the fairness of the monopolistic project management, sources said.

Through investigations, however, the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office's special investigation squad suspected some of the project's funds had been misappropriated by Pacific Program Management, whose president at the time was former PCI President Tamio Araki.
(Apr. 24, 2008)