An employee of Yamaichi Securities Co. was stabbed in the stomach on a Tokyo street late Aug. 14. He was rushed to a hospital but died soon afterward from loss of blood, police said. The man, identified by business cards found on the body, was 57-year-old Koichiro Tarutani, chief of the securities company's customer counseling office, police said.

The customer counseling office falls under the firm's audit department and deals with clients' complaints. Police said they are investigating whether Tarutani had been experiencing difficulties with a client.

The man was stabbed in a commercial district about 100 meters south of Heiwajima Station on the Keihin Electric Railway Line. The owner of a nearby restaurant, who made an emergency call to police, said the victim staggered into his shop covered with blood from the waist down and fell on his side. The shop owner said he tried to talk to him but he was trembling and not in a state to talk.

The head office of Yamaichi Securities was raided by investigators from the Tokyo District Public Prosecutor's office late last month on suspicion the company provided about 79 million yen to a "sokaiya" corporate racketeer in unearned trading gains from commodity futures trading. The firm's president and other company executives subsequently stepped down to take responsibility for the scandal.