A city assembly member and two others have been arrested on suspicion of accepting bribes in connection with the reconstruction of the city hall in Yatsushiro in Kumamoto Prefecture, western Japan. The hall became unusable after massive quakes ten years ago.
The three suspects are Narimatsu Yukio, a city assembly member, a former assembly member and a company official.
Tokyo police and other sources say the suspects allegedly received 60 million yen, or about 383,000 dollars, from staff of Tokyo-based Maeda Corporation’s Kyushu branch in June 2021 in return for lobbying senior city officials to provide favorable treatment in the bidding process.
The statute of limitations has reportedly expired for the staff who allegedly paid the bribes.
The Yatsushiro city hall became unusable after massive quakes caused cracks in its walls and other damage ten years ago. A joint venture, including Maeda Corporation, was the only participant in the bidding process. It won the contract for 11.8 billion yen, or about 75 million dollars. This was 99.9 percent of the price set by the city.
The new city hall, designed to withstand a quake with an intensity of 7 on Japan’s seismic scale of zero to 7, was completed in January 2022. But the total cost of the project reportedly increased more than 5 billion yen from the original plan, reaching about 17.1 billion yen.
The joint investigation headquarters of Tokyo and Kumamoto police suspect that Narimatsu and others lobbied senior city officials at the construction company’s request to give the joint venture favorable treatment in the bidding.
Police have not disclosed whether the three have admitted to the allegations.