Ex-Minister in Japan Gets Jail in Bribery Case
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TOKYO — A former Japanese construction minister was sentenced to 18 months in prison today after he was found guilty in a 1994 bid-fixing and bribery scandal, court officials said.
In a rare move, Judge Osamu Ikeda of the Tokyo District Court did not suspend the sentence, meaning that Kishiro Nakamura, who still holds a seat in parliament, will go to prison. Japanese courts often hand down suspended sentences for first-time offenders.
Prosecutors charged Nakamura with taking the equivalent of $82,600 from Kajima Construction Co. in order to put pressure on the Fair Trade Commission, or FTC, to stop its investigation of widespread bid-fixing allegations involving big construction companies.
During the court battle, former FTC Chairman Toshio Umezawa said that Nakamura, then a rising star in Japan’s long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party, had demanded that the FTC not file a legal complaint, the first step in a possible criminal court procedure.
The case represented the last of the big money scandals that toppled the Liberal Democrats in 1993.
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