Jan 27, 2020 (Japan Times) - A former SoftBank Corp. employee was arrested Saturday for allegedly passing proprietary information from the major phone carrier to officials at Russia’s trade representative office in Tokyo.
The Metropolitan Police Department’s Public Safety Bureau said it suspects the Russian officials were engaging in espionage.
Yutaka Araki, 48, is suspected of illegally accessing a computer server at SoftBank on Feb. 18 last year and obtaining two sets of trade secrets with which he had been involved, the police said.
Araki could have provided numerous corporate secrets repeatedly to the Russian officials, according to the police.
Araki, a resident of Urayasu, Chiba Prefecture, has admitted to stealing the information, according to the police, who quoted him as saying he did it to earn a “little extra money.â€
According to investigative sources, Araki received hundreds of thousands of yen for providing the information kept in data storage devices to the Russian side.
Through the Foreign Ministry, the police requested that the Russian Embassy present two Russian men — one in his 50s and the other in his 40s — who returned to Russia in 2017, for questioning through organizations including the Foreign Ministry.
The police believe a Russian official who used to work in Tokyo first contacted Araki before passing on his connection to the official currently working at the trade mission, who has diplomatic status.
