Construction company Kajima Corp. and two political secretaries named in recent scandals competed for work on the same hospital building project in Yamagata Prefecture in the late 1990s, industry sources said Thursday.
Mitsuro Ozaki, 56, a business consulting firm executive and former secretary to House of Representatives member Michihiko Kano, tried to arrange a bid-rigging deal for constructing the hospital before the bid was conducted, they said.
The Yamagata Prefectural Government conducted bidding for the project in March 1998. Seven joint ventures participated. But Kajima, in a joint venture with two other firms, won the bid at 15.2 billion yen, the sources said.