Ex-farm ministry affiliate execs, entities admit to bid rigging

Two former senior officials of the government-affiliated Japan Green Resources Agency and five officials from four contractors pleaded guilty Wednesday to rigging bids for public works ordered by the agency in fiscal 2005 and 2006.

In the first hearing of the trial at the Tokyo District Court, prosecutors explained how the agency, or J-Green, has initiated bid rigging activities over the years to enable ''amakudari'' golden parachuting for its retired employees.

On one of the defendants Muneo Takagi, 59, a former executive director in charge of forest projects at the agency, a prosecutor said, ''Since around 1994, he had made original order adjustment plans so that the four contractors would be given priority in getting the contracts, under the instructions from his superior.''

The prosecutors indicted a total of seven people as well as the contractors themselves. The suicide in May of former farm minister Toshikatsu Matsuoka, who reportedly received political donations from J-Green contractors, made it difficult to further uncover the case.

The four contractors are two Forestry Agency-supervised public-interest corporations -- Shinko Kosaikai and Japan Forest Engineering Consultants -- and two consultant companies -- K.K. Forestech and Katahira & Engineers Inc.

The written indictment and other sources said that the defendants violated the Antimonopoly Act by colluding to bid on prices prior to public bidding for works conducted in fiscal 2005 and 2006, such as geological survey for forest road construction.

Shortly after prosecutors arrested Takagi and others in May, Matsuoka, then farm minister, killed himself and a 76-year-old former executive director of the agency's predecessor, who was alleged to have established the bid rigging mechanism, also killed himself.

J-Green, which the government nominally spun off in 2003 as part of an administrative reform, is promoting a 2,025-kilometer forest road construction project that is two-thirds financed by central government subsidies, with the rest financed by prefectural governments.

The Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry decided to scrap the agency following the bid rigging case.