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Video allegedly of Fuji Xerox officials bribing Chinese arbitrator posted online
Shanghai.
January 2006-CHINA – A video clip allegedly showing Fuji Xerox
officials attempting to bribe a Chinese arbitrator presiding over an
arbitration case filed against the Japanese firm was posted on Chinese
news portal Sina
Fuji Xerox officials were not immediately available for comment on the video.
An
unidentified publishing house based in the northern Chinese
municipality of Tianjin filed for arbitration against Fuji Xerox in
August of 2003 on charges the Japanese firm sold it faulty digital
printers in a deal worth RMB 2.5 mln (USD 0.3 mln). The publishing
house asked that Fuji Xerox refund it for the purchase. However, the
arbitration commission ruled in November last year that Fuji Xerox
(China) should only pay the publishing house RMB 102,442 (USD 12,805).
The Tianjin-based publishing house, citing a video made by some of its
employees as evidence, is now charging that Fuji Xerox (China)
officials bribed one of the arbitrators on the commission.
The
publishing house gave copies of the video, purportedly made on July 6,
2005, to Sina.com and Chinese newspaper China Business News. The video
allegedly shows Chen Zhenwei, a Fuji Xerox (China) legal official, and
the company’s corporate lawyer Zhang Decai having dinner with an
arbitrator surnamed Qi.
“So far, we have received no information
about the video,” an official with the Tianjin Arbitration Commission,
surnamed Yang, told Interfax. “I’ll report the video to senior
officials and they will decide whether we need to re-arbitrate the
case. Arbitrators are definitely not allowed to have personal meetings
with parties involved in cases.”
In July of last year, the case
between Fuji Xerox and the publishing house was ongoing and Qi was a
member of the arbitration commission presiding over the case. The
publishing house is arguing that the Fuji Xerox officials should not
have been having dinner with Qi while the case was ongoing. However,
the video, which is only 25 seconds in length, shows litte more than a
brief glimpse of a private dinning room at a restaurant and the faces
of three individuals.
An official with the publishing house said
that he felt the arbitrators’ attitudes changed obviously after the
dinner, which allegedly took place in July of last year, China Business
News reported.
In addition, the paper quoted Zhang, Fuji Xerox’s
lawyer, and the arbitrator surnamed Qi as saying that the dinner took
place because Qi was leaving his position as an arbitrator on the
commission overseeing the case between Fuji Xerox and the publishing
house.
The publishing house signed a RMB 2.5 mln (USD 0.3 mln) deal
with Fuji Xerox (Shanghai) in late 1999 to purchase digital printers.
However, the printers needed to be repaired 166 times from March to
September 2003, the publishing house alleged. The publishing house
applied to the Tianjin Arbitration Commission in August 2003 for Fuji
Xerox to refund money paid for the printers. The commission ruled that
Fuji Xerox should pay RMB 102,442 (USD 12,805) to the publishing house
in November of last year.
Meanwhile, in addition to this case in
Tianjin, a number of Chinese media reported in January this year that
Fuji Photo Film had been smuggling film and photo-paper into the
Chinese market through one of its local partners in the Guangxi
Autonomous Region. The Chinese government has yet to take any official
action in the case. Fuji officials, moreover, have strongly denied the
reports.
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