Saturday, February 10, 2018

Sneaky Citizen

Oddities and inconsistencies often arise from reading wide & various news reports. Here's one from late Friday afternoon:

Citizen Watch Co. (シチズン時計) accepted the resignation of the President of their subsidiary, Citizen Electronics Co. (シチズン電子社長を解任した), for falsifying product data. It seems both the origin and longevity of key LEDs, switches & sensors were misrepresented for many years so as not to "lose contracts mainly with North American clients."

The report was vague, and no other English-language news (as of now, Saturday morning) is reporting yet about the scandal.

Looking at Japanese-language reports, it becomes clearer: Citizen lied about place-or-origin, claiming domestic Japanese origin for parts made in China.

Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun reports this was at least a seven-year fraud, involving 166 types of products, and 1.3 billion mislabeled parts (約13億3300万個).

This may mean additional import duties & penalties are due to "North American" authorities, and surely they should pay compensation to defrauded consumers.  Further, we wonder how many other manufacturers deceive us everyday?

BAD Corporate Citizen