JAPANESE police have arrested a former SoftBank employee for allegedly stealing proprietary information from the telecoms giant and giving it to Russian officials, said police and media reports today.

Yutaka Araki, 48, is suspected of obtaining “trade secrets from a computer server at a telecommunications-related company on February 18 last year, in violation of Japan’s unfair competition prevention law”, said Tokyo police in a statement.

Authorities did not identify the firm, but local media said it is major mobile carrier SoftBank Corp, a unit of the SoftBank Group.

Police suspect that trade officials at Moscow’s mission in Tokyo are involved in espionage, reported Jiji Press and other local news outlets.

The reports added that police have asked the Russian embassy to present two officials to Japanese authorities.

In a statement on its Facebook page, the embassy described the press reports as “regrettable” and “cheap spy allegations”.

SoftBank in a statement said it is cooperating with the investigation, and that “no information that is highly confidential, such as customers’ personal information or anything that violates secrecy of communication”, was compromised.

Araki told police that he received money in return for providing the information, kept in data storage devices, to Russian officials, said the Yomiuri Shimbun daily, citing unnamed police sources. – AFP, January 26, 2020.