Police arrested a private secretary of Lower House legislator Katsuhiko Shirakawa and two others Sunday for allegedly asking the Niigata Prefectural Police to cover up a traffic violation last year in Itakura, Niigata Prefecture, police sources said.
The secretary, Akio Fujimaki, 39, allegedly acted as a go-between and received a 30,000 yen gift certificate for his role, they said. The identities of the two others were not available.
According to police, Fujimaki approached Norio Osawa, 60, superintendent and head of the Niigata force's traffic section, in October with a request to erase a computerized record of a traffic violation committed by a self-employed, 45-year-old man from Itakura. Osawa then asked his subordinate, Nozomu Sonehara, 50, an assistant police inspector, to do the erasing, police said.
The two police officers were arrested last week and have admitted to the charges, police said.
The self-employed man, whose identity has been withheld, contacted Fujimaki through one of Shirawaka's former secretaries, police said.
Shirakawa, a member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, was home affairs minister and chairman of the National Public Safety Commission in the Cabinet of former Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto.