KYB names 70 government and municipal office buildings that may be using substandard earthquake shoc

The names were supplied by the company, which also admitted products that failed to meet state standards had been used at 11 of them.

“I would like to sincerely apologize for this improper conduct,” Keisuke Saito, a senior official at KYB, told a hastily organized and packed news conference in Tokyo on Friday afternoon, as the quality control scandal continued to widen after the firm admitted Tuesday to cheating on inspection data concerning earthquake shock absorbers for more than a decade.

“We decided to disclose this information first, in the belief that many people visit these buildings,” the official said. The firm’s president, Yasusuke Nakajima, did not appear at the news conference.

On the list of the 70 buildings was the Finance Ministry in Tokyo as well as the Osaka and Hokkaido prefectural government offices. The 11 buildings recognized as using products that did not meet state standards included the Central Government Building No. 1 in Tokyo, where the agriculture ministry is located, and the main building of Aichi Prefectural Office.

While revealing the names, the company said it has to determine whether there are irregularities at many of the buildings on the list.

“At this point we’ve only been able to compile information concerning these buildings but will try to disclose details about other facilities as soon as such information becomes available,” Saito said. He also admitted that Tokyo Skytree, a popular tourist spot, was among buildings using dampers that did not meet quality requirements.

The list is only part of the nearly 1,000 buildings already known to have been affected by KYB’s fabrication of quality data, which is suspected to have stretched between January 2003 and this September. The sub-standard products suspected of having been used were also found to have been exported to Taiwan, although the volume is small, according to the company.

Source: ANNnewsCH