5 avoid prison in grilled eel false labeling case.

KOBE, April 27 Kyodo

The Kobe District Court handed prison terms of two and a half years, suspended for four years, to five people for falsely labeling grilled eels farmed in China as products made using Japan-raised eels last year.

Akihiro Nakatani, 45, president of Osaka-based seafood importer Uohide, and Junichi Kitamoto, 40, a former employee of Kobe-based Shinko Gyorui Ltd., are among the five found guilty of violating the law against unfair competition.

Also sentenced were Tomoyuki Kawakami, 42, chief of Uohide's Fukuoka sales office, Keiichi Yokoyama, 40, a non-executive director of the company, and Yoshitaka Inayama, 44, a former board member of a seafood-processing company based in Takamatsu, Kagawa Prefecture.

According to the ruling, Nakatani and the others conspired to supply 256 tons of grilled eels farmed in China in cardboard boxes labeled as products originating from Aichi Prefecture between February and April last year. They sold about 15 tons to nine business partners.

Judge Tetsuo Sano said the false labeling scheme resulted in 430 million yen in illegal revenue.

''It was a malicious case that was plotted systematically and cleverly, and it damaged confidence in food labeling,'' Sano said.

The judge also ordered Inayama to pay a 4 million yen fine, while the others were fined 2 million yen each. Inayama earned about 86 million yen in extra profit from falsely packaging the eels at a warehouse in Takamatsu.

Fines of 10 million yen each were imposed on Uohide and its parent company, Tokushima Uoichiba, while Shinko Gyorui was fined 5 million yen.