The Industrial Bank of Japan announced April 15 that, beginning this month, Chairman Yo Kurosawa and President Masao Nishimura will surrender their salaries for the year in connection with the recent bribery scandal involving the bank, the IBJ said.
It is the harshest internal penalty to be announced by a commercial bank over the scandal, which involves 10 banks, the Finance Ministry and the Bank of Japan. The IBJ decided in February to cut the two senior executives' salaries by 50 percent as part of a restructuring effort. Since then, the two have voluntarily surrendered their pay to take the blame for the scandal, in which the bank bribed a senior official at Japan Highway Public Corp. who was formerly a Finance Ministry official.
The latest salary cuts follow the summary indictment last month of an IBJ employee who bribed a senior BOJ official. The salary of the employee who received the summary indictment will be also reduced, the bank said, without elaborating.