In October 1980, the KGB sought machinery capable of producing large-vessel propeller screws. Wako Koeki connected the request to Toshiba Machine, and negotiations began in December 1980. The companies arranged exports of four nine-axis and four five-axis machine tools, equipment restricted by the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls (CoCom). Kongsberg Gruppen obtained permission for a numerical-control machine by representing it as a two-axis tool; the equipment and later its software were shipped through Japan to the Soviet Union. Shipments reached Leningrad in 1983, and Hitori Kumagai installed machines at the Baltic Shipyard in December 1983 and December 1984.
Kumagai resigned from Wako in 1985 and reported the exports to Japanese authorities and CoCom in a December 1985 letter, attaching documentation and his contact information. Japan’s foreign, trade, finance, police, and defense authorities met in January 1986, but the government, Itochu, Toshiba, and affiliated companies denied the allegations until 1987. After Norway investigated at U.S. request in January 1987, Japanese media reported the nine-axis violation on April 30 and the five-axis violation on June 18; the source states that the statute of limitations had already expired. The episode exposed failures in export-control enforcement and government disclosure, and became known as the Toshiba–Kongsberg scandal.
