Toyota could face rapist charge in US Business

The scale of the Toyota stop predicament could even strike the wider Japanese economy as the foresee for exports is downgraded. Photograph: David Sillitoe

The Toyota predicament deepened serve after the beleaguered carmaker certified it had been subpoenaed by a sovereign grand jury, and a congressional cabinet indicted it of dubious the public.

Toyota suggested last night that it perceived a sovereign grand jury summons from the US attorney"s bureau for the southern district of New York this month.

The summons demanded that Toyota and the subsidiaries "produce sure papers associated to unintended increase in speed of Toyota vehicles and the braking complement of the Prius". This raises the probability that the Japanese association could face rapist charge in America, and potentially outrageous fines, over reserve problems with multiform of the models.

Toyota additionally voiced that it has perceived a apart summons from the Los Angeles bureau of the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC wants to see "certain papers together with those associated to unintended increase in speed of Toyota vehicles and the company"s avowal policies and practices".

These ultimate developments come as multiform tip Toyota management team hope for to attest prior to US politicians. The hearings will proceed after currently when the boss of Toyota Motor Sales USA, Jim Lentz, appears prior to the House cabinet on appetite and commerce.

This cabinet has already ratcheted up the vigour on Lentz, in a minute yesterday that indicted the association of:

• unwell to examine reports of unintended increase in speed dating behind to 2000

• rushing out the formula of a injured review in to the complaint of unintended increase in speed this month, after contrast usually 6 cars

• revelation the open that "sticky" pedals were to censure for majority of the incidents of unintended acceleration, even though this was contradicted by the own inner data.

"Our rough comment is that Toyota resisted the probability that electronic defects could means reserve concerns, relied on a injured engineering report, and finished dubious open statements connected with the endowment of new recalls to residence the risk of sudden, unintended acceleration," wrote cabinet authority Henry Waxman.

On Wednesday, arch senior manager Akio Toyoda will attest prior to an additional committee, the House slip and supervision remodel committee. He is approaching to be quizzed about either Toyota responded rightly to reports of problems with the vehicles. On Sunday, leaked memos showed that Toyota staff boasted about how they had saved $100m (£65m) by persuading the US authorities in 2007 to determine to usually a singular stop of building mats, that have been blamed for a little of the increase in speed problems.

The scale of the predicament could even strike Japan"s economy. Today the Japanese supervision downgraded the foresee for exports in Feb to "increasing moderately" from "increasing" a month ago, partly due to "Japanese cars" stop issues". The cost of recalling millions of Toyota models is approaching to cost the association at slightest $2bn.

The recalls could additionally lead to a retrial for a man locked up for causing a pile-up in that 3 people died. Koua Fong Lee had claimed that the brakes on his 1996 Toyota Camry had failed, causing him to pile-up in to an additional car at 70 miles an hour in 2006, murdering 3 people. Lee was condemned to eight years in 2007 after a US jury did not hold his story. Now, though, kin of the victims hold he could be innocent.

"In my heart, the approach I feel now, it wasn"t his fault," Quincy Adams, who survived the accident, told ABC News.

Lee"s profession plans to ask a US decider to recover his customer forward of a retrial.

"There was a distressing wrong finished here, and there"s an trusting man in prison. From the day this happened, he has regularly confirmed that it was the car," pronounced Brent Schafer.