Four former business executives in Japan received suspended prison sentences today for cheating the government out of $3 million after their company was contracted to support chemical weapons disposal operations in China, Kyodo News reported (see GSN, June 4, 2008).
Sentenced in Tokyo District Court were former Pacific Consultants International president Masayoshi Taga, former PCI executives Tsutomu Kurihara and Nobuo Kuga and Hiroyuki Endo, one-time head of a PCI branch.
Presiding Judge Toshihiko Sonohara said the men would not be sent to prison because they had already paid compensation equal to the amount of the fraud.
Pacific Consultants was hired to support recovery and elimination of Japanese chemical weapons that were abandoned in China at the end of World War II (see GSN, Jan. 23). The executives in fiscal 2004 overcharged the government in the amount of $1.4 million, according to a three-judge District Court panel. Taga repeated the fraud over the next two fiscal years, collecting $1.6 million (Kyodo News, March 24).