Takashi Usami

The Yokohama Summary Court opened the first in a series of trials on the criminal liability of the scandal-ridden MMC and its executives, as well as former executives of Mitsubishi Fuso Truck & Bus Corp., which was spun off last year from MMC.

The three defendants are former Mitsubishi Fuso Chairman Takashi Usami (pictured), 64, former MMC Managing Director Akio Hanawa, 63, and former Mitsubishi Fuso Executive Officer Tadashi Koshikawa, 61.

They are among a group of eight, including former MMC President Katsuhiko Kawasoe, 67, charged with covering up defects that are believed to have caused two fatal accidents in 2002.

According to the indictment, Usami and the other defendants stand accused of concealing defects in a report submitted to the Land, Infrastructure and Transport Ministry in February 2002, one month after the accident in Yokohama, in which a wheel came off a Mitsubishi tractor-trailer rig and hit and killed a 29-year-old woman, and injured her two young children.

The Japan Times Weekly: Sept. 11, 2004
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