NAGOYA – A former employee of major Japanese chemical company Asahi Kasei Corp. was arrested Thursday on suspicion of leaking confidential information on adhesives used in semiconductor manufacturing, police said.<\/p>\n
Shoichi Furukawa, 66, is suspected of leaking the information to a Chinese firm, according to Asahi Kasei. Aichi prefectural police have not disclosed whether he has admitted to the charge.<\/p>\n
Furukawa served as the head of a manufacturing technology department, among other roles, before leaving Asahi Kasei at the end of November 2018, police said.<\/p>\n
A company based in Nagoya, where he later worked, consulted police in August 2024 over a separate suspected information leak he was involved in.<\/p>\n
An analysis of items including a computer seized during a search of Furukawa’s home confirmed that he had taken trade secrets from Asahi Kasei, police said.<\/p>\n
Furukawa is suspected of failing to return a digital storage medium containing data on the production of Novacure, a latent curing agent classified as a trade secret, around Nov. 30, 2018, and then emailing the data to a person affiliated with another company around Sept. 13, 2024.<\/p>\n
Asahi Kasei said its own investigation confirmed that the other company was Chinese, and that Furukawa had served as plant manager and head of development for electronic materials while employed.<\/p>\n
Novacure is a latent curing agent used in adhesives for auto parts and semiconductors.<\/p>\n
Asahi Kasei said it is reviewing access privileges for confidential information and tightening information controls for employees planning to leave, adding, “We deeply apologize for the inconvenience and concern caused.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NAGOYA – A former employee of major Japanese chemical company Asahi Kasei Corp. was arrested Thursday on suspicion…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":850910,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,451,3,452,453],"class_list":["post-850909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=850909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850909\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/850910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=850909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=850909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=850909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}