Here is the follow-up to JSP Catchup #6: Probe Uncovers 40-year Japanese Contractor Fraud and a fuller story for Defense News published the following week. I am still intrigued on who blew the whistle and why, but hopefully this will clean out a very mucky stable. Again there are so many unanswered questions, but perhaps it was felt that Melco had gotten too big for its boots.

This was certainly the message I got around Kasumigaseki in the mid-noughties when it became increasingly apparent that, at least in space, the IGS was overpriced and not very functional. But it seemed that Japan was stuck with it until better alternatives came up.

Meanwhile, Melco’s answer was, of course, to ask for more money to improve (repair) the IGS. The numbers of contracts and amounts are quite staggering, because the practice of overcharging was built into the very fabric of Melco’s system, and reading between the lines, it seems that the NEC scandal of 1998, instead of provoking a response to clean up, it did the reverse- Melco adopted increasingly sophisticated systems of cover-up and concealment. Not good.

A basic fact is that Melco produces a lot of excellent technology and systems and is a corner stone of Japan’s defense and space industries. While it really should have cleaned its stable out in 1998, as no doubt many others did, to the degree of information that is available, it seems that justice is being done. Perhaps at last, some real “Changes for the Better” ?