Tadashi Okuda, a former chairman of Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank, was sentenced Wednesday to nine months in prison, suspended for five years, for illegally lending some 11.8 billion yen to a "sokaiya" corporate racketeer in a scandal that shocked the nation's finance industry.
The Tokyo District Court found Okuda, 67, guilty of conspiring with other executives to extend loans to Ryuichi Koike, 56, via Daiwa Shinyo, a nonbank moneylender affiliated with the city bank, during the period spanning 1994 to 1996 in violation of the Commercial Code.
Koike, who was given a nine-month prison sentence in April, had threatened to disrupt shareholders' meetings unless the loans were made.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.