Kobe Steel demotes three executives over cheating scandal

Kobe Steel says it has has demoted three executives who were aware of the data tampering behind the company’s recent cheating scandal.

The trio from the aluminium and copper divisions have been relieved from their duties and reassigned to lower-ranking roles, the company said in a press conference in Tokyo on Thursday (pictured).

Two of those executives knew of the falsification problems as far back as 2009, while one became aware only this year, the company said.

The company also said the release of an independent report into these problems would be delayed by two months until February next year.

Japan’s third-largest steelmaker was thrown into crisis in October when it admitted to falsifying product data on shipments of copper and aluminium between the start of this year and August.

The scandal quickly spread across other metals divisions and products, ultimately affecting more than 500 companies, including well-known multinationals, that use Kobe Steel materials in their own products including cars, jets, trains, rockets and nuclear plants.

Falsification of product data was said to have gone on for at least a decade. Nearly 95 per cent of Kobe Steel’s customers have said they are yet to find any immediate safety problems related to potentially affected products.

Concerns about quality controls at Japanese manufacturers were stoked again this week. Allegations were levelled against Subaru that it had tampered with fuel economy data for its vehicles. This came in the wake of the carmaker’s report, released on Tuesday, into its own vehicle inspection scandal that came to light in October.

Mitsubishi Materials, another manufacturer that admitted to data tampering at its subsidiaries in November, said on December 19 it had found additional products for which product quality information may have been manipulated.

(Image: EPA)