Sanyo Executive Freed After Firm Pays $2 Million

Ending a nine-day ordeal that raised doubts about security in Mexico’s fast-growing maquiladora industry, a Japanese executive was released by kidnappers early Monday on the outskirts of Tijuana after his company paid a $2-million ransom in unmarked U.S. currency, Mexican police said.

Mamoru Konno, 57, president of Sanyo’s Video Component Corp. USA, hid in the basement of a half-built home in the gritty La Mesa section of Tijuana for about five hours after his release from kidnappers before he was found by authorities about 4 a.m. Monday. Baja California officials said Konno was exhausted and frightened from the ordeal that began Aug. 10 but was otherwise in good condition.

Konno was the first foreign executive in Mexico’s mushrooming maquiladora industry known to have been kidnapped, although Mexico is in the grip of a kidnapping wave in which wealthy residents are the usual targets. The crime caused many foreign-owned manufacturers in Tijuana to tighten security.

“Mr. Konno is in good health and very relieved that his ordeal is over,” Sanyo North America Corp. President Motoharu Iue said at a news conference at a Sanyo plant in Tijuana, where the company employs 5,000 workers. “His courage, cool head and positive attitude contributed to his safe return.”

Konno was not present at the news conference, and Iue declined to disclose his whereabouts after his release. His wife and two children had flown to San Diego from Japan last week.

Mexican authorities said they believe that six kidnappers took Konno Aug. 10 from a park where he had attended a company baseball game.

Although none of them were captured, four of the gang have been identified and are thought to be part of a ring that kidnapped a wealthy farmer in the San Quentin area of Baja California earlier this year, Baja California Atty. Gen. Jose Luis Anaya Bautista told reporters at a Tijuana news conference Monday.

Not wanting to jeopardize Konno’s life, authorities made no attempt to arrest the kidnappers at the ransom drop, Bautista said. But photographs of some gang members were taken, although Bautista did not say how and when. He said there was an 80% chance that some suspects will soon be arrested.

Bautista said the gang consisted of five Mexicans and one South American from an unspecified country.

The FBI assisted Mexican police in the case by making high-tech surveillance and listening equipment available. In all, 10 phone calls were made by the kidnappers to Sanyo before the ransom was delivered, Bautista said, each of which was recorded.

Sanyo, whose San Diego office oversees the Tijuana operation, was warned to comply with a Saturday deadline and given written instructions on where and how to deliver the ransom in a note left Saturday in the La Joya area of Tijuana.

The ransom money raised by Sanyo was delivered to the gang Saturday night by special undercover agents of the anti-kidnapping squad attached to the federal attorney general’s office. An agent drove a Sanyo-owned car with a suitcase full of unmarked $100 bills to a drop-off area in the Gloria neighborhood of Tijuana. There, two gunmen took the money and sped off in the car.

At 10 p.m. Sunday, Sanyo officials were informed that Konno had been released in the La Mesa area of Tijuana about 10 miles east of downtown and close to where the kidnapping took place. Because Konno, fearing for his safety if he left, hid in the basement of an abandoned house on Calle Benton, it took police five hours of sweeping the neighborhood to find him.

The Baja California authorities said they were not sure where Konno had been held by the gang.

An earlier attempt to deliver the money and free Konno went awry Thursday when kidnappers noticed three planes circling overhead and called off the exchange, Bautista said.

Security at the maquiladoras has tightened since the kidnapping, said Dennis La Salle Ainza, president of the Industrial Assn. of Otay Mesa, a trade group representing 130 maquiladoras in Tijuana’s eastern mesa near the U.S. border. (Maquiladoras are foreign-owned plants set up to take advantage of low-cost labor and North American Free Trade Agreement provisions.) Members are the city’s biggest manufacturers, including Hitachi, Matsushita, Sony and Sanyo, which make components for televisions and computer monitors and employ about 1,200 people.

“Our members are subsidizing two more police patrols around our area,” Ainza said. “We hope this won’t affect foreign investment in Tijuana, but it’s going to have a negative impact.”

At the Sanyo news conference, Iue said his company would ask Mexican, Japanese and U.S. authorities to “contribute to an effort to build a safer environment” around the maquiladoras.

In Osaka, Japan, Sanyo President Yasuaki Takano said, “We appreciate that our company’s president has been released without any injury, and we deeply appreciate the cooperation of the Mexican police, the [Japanese] Foreign Ministry and the embassy.”

Takano said the incident would not affect Sanyo’s business in Mexico, but expressed hope that Mexican authorities would ensure that conditions in the country are safe enough to encourage foreign investment and economic growth.

But Iue, who is active in San Diego Economic Development Corp. activities, predicted that maquiladoras will continue to grow and contribute to Baja California’s prosperity. “There will not be any repercussions in the expansion of the Baja California economy,” Iue said.

Bautista dismissed suggestions that Baja California judicial police were involved in the kidnapping. Two Baja state police members were charged in the kidnap-murder July 24 of a wealthy truck rental firm owner in Mexicali last month.

The Baja attorney general also scoffed at radio reports that an elite so-called Japanese ninja police squad had assisted in Konno’s rescue, saying the ransom and rescue operation was carried out solely by Mexican state and federal agents led by his office.

Times staff writers Tony Perry in San Diego and David Holley in Tokyo contributed to this story.

* MEXICO ASSASSINATION: Murder of another prosecutor raises new questions. A16