By Shigeru Sato and Yuji Okada
March 4 (Bloomberg) -- Horkos Corp., a Japanese machinery maker, is accused of violated national security laws for exporting devices that can be used for nuclear fuel enrichment plants to China and South Korea, Japan’s trade ministry said.
Horkos Corp., which was founded in 1940 and is based in Hiroshima, produced and exported the unspecified devices to China and South Korea since 2001 without permission from the ministry, it said in a statement.
Police arrested four Horkos employees, a Hiroshima police spokesman said, on condition of anonymity. He declined to identify those arrested. Investigations, which started in July last year, are continuing, the trade ministry said.
Under the Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Act, usually referred to as the national security law, an entity must obtain permission from the trade minister when exporting products that may threaten international peace and safety.
No one is available to comment on the arrests, a Horkos employee who picked up the phone and wouldn’t give her name said, when contacted by Bloomberg News. Masao Sugata, president of Horkos, wasn’t in the office, she said.
Horkos has 665 employees and annual revenue of 20.3 billion yen ($206 million), according to its Web site.
To contact the reporter on this story: Shigeru Sato in Tokyo at ssato10@bloomberg.net.
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