TOKYO —

Former Vice Defense Minister Takemasa Moriya pleaded guilty Monday at the Tokyo District Court to taking a total of about 12.5 million yen in bribes from a defense equipment trader while serving as the top defense bureaucrat and to giving false testimony in parliament.
   
Motonobu Miyazaki, 69, a former executive of defense equipment trader Yamada Corp, and Osamu Akiyama, 70, a former president at Yamada’s U.S. subsidiary Yamada International Corp, meanwhile, pleaded guilty to bribing Moriya, 63. Tomonari Imaji, 57, a former executive director of Yamada Corp, pleaded guilty to a charge of forging signatures on private documents and using them.
 
According to the indictment, Moriya received a total of about 8.86 million yen worth of overnight trips, including one-day golf outings, on 120 occasions from August 2003 to April 2007 from Miyazaki as reward for giving special treatment to the trader in the procurement of defense equipment. Moriya also allegedly received $32,000, or 3.63 million yen, in cash through bank accounts of his wife and his second eldest daughter from Miyazaki from May 2004 to February 2006.
 

© 2008 Kyodo News. All rights reserved. No reproduction or republication without written permission.

› Login to comment

6 Comments

• 

  jammer at 05:58 PM JST - 21st April

  Moriya also allegedly received $32,000, or 3.63 million yen, in cash through bank accounts of his wife and his second eldest daughter from Miyazaki from May 2004 to February 2006.

  Incriminates his wife and daughter too. Nice dad. Wonder if they will get off scott-free?

• 

  lipscombe at 06:08 PM JST - 21st April

  yeah, and so will he

• 

  capone at 06:30 PM JST - 21st April

  and of course no mention of him having to give the money back

• 

  GW at 09:47 PM JST - 21st April

  aaaah the good old KB/bribe thing, ever so popular here, major reason why everything is so dang expensive. I wud love to see a prime minister with some nads tell every damn ministry that their budgets are cut 20-30% as its abundantly clear that at the very least these amounts are wasted on this non-sense

• 

  borscht at 07:35 AM JST - 22nd April

  GW

  While I agree every ministry should have their budgets cut if a minister is convicted of accepting bribes, I don't get your reasoning. You seem to be saying the budget is wasted on accepting bribes. Are you?

  And, as lipscombe alludes, Moriya's 'punishment' will probably be 3 -5 years suspended. He might be ordered to give the money back but since it was given to his wife and daughter, he won't really have to because...'it is not his.'

• 

  Scrote at 08:25 AM JST - 22nd April

  I think the point is that ministries routinely overpay for public works by 20-30% and some of that money finds its way back to the bureaucrats and politicians in the form of bribes.

  So, cut ministry budgets by 20-30% and force them to eliminate bid rigging and corruption. Unfortunately, there seems to be no will to do this.

Register or Login to leave a comment