I've never heard that myself, but it's not possible to stop everybody the world over from building air planes. The restrictions on ship building that came from the Washington/London Naval Disarmament treaties weren't really followed because there wasn't any really good way to enforce them, something that plagued the League of Nations in most of it's endeavors.

From militaryhistory.com's page about the Washington treaty

The series of treaties begun with the Washington Naval Treaty effectively ceased on September 1, 1939, with the beginning of World War II. While in place, the treaty did somewhat limit capital ship construction, however the per vessel tonnage limitations were frequently flouted with most signatories either using creative accounting in computing displacement or outright lying about a vessel's size.