Citizen Watch subsidiary falsifies place of production, product data

February 11, 2018

Tokyo- Citizen Watch Co. said Friday that an electronic parts unit has sold switches and censors by lying about where they were produced.

The company also revealed that the subsidiary, Citizen Electronics Co., based in Fujiyoshida, Yamanashi Prefecture, fabricated quality test data for light-emitting diodes.

The same day, the major watch maker demoted an executive of Citizen Electronics who was allowing the misconduct to go on and effectively dismissed President Yoshihiro Gota and another executive of the subsidiary who was involved in the wrongdoing before being promoted to the firm's board.

Specifically, Citizen Electronics shipped for more than seven years until June last year a total of some 1,333 million units of at least 166 kinds of products by falsely stating where they were made. Separately, labels on some product container boxes indicated "Made in Japan" although products manufactured in China were included, the parent said. Jiji Press