Mitsui & Co. President Shinjiro Shimizu announced Wednesday that he and two other executives of the major trading house will take voluntary pay cuts of 20 percent for three months to assume responsibility for a scandal involving bids for a power plant project on Kunashiri Island, off Hokkaido.
In addition to Shimizu, Chairman Shigeji Ueshima and a vice president will take home smaller pay checks, he said.
Earlier in the day, the Tokyo District Public Prosecutor's Office indicted two Mitsui employees on charges of interfering with the bidding for the power plant.
The pair, Masahide Iino, head of a project marketing team, and Yusuke Shimazaki, a member of another marketing team, were indicted along with two former Foreign Ministry bureaucrats, Masaru Sato, 42, and Akira Maejima, 38, for their alleged roles in the case.
According to the indictment, Iino, 44, and Shimazaki, 38, arranged to have rival trading houses Sumitomo Corp. and Kanematsu Corp. take part in the March 2000 bid for the power plant contract just for show.
They then obtained the official cost estimates for the project from Sato and Maejima and successfully bid for the contract, it said. The two former bureaucrats have also been charged with breach of trust.
Although Mitsui initially denied any wrongdoing, Iino and Shimazaki have admitted to the allegations, according to prosecutors.
In addition, investigative sources said Mitsui is also suspected of giving 50 million yen to another major trading house, Marubeni Corp., by allowing it to take part in a separate deal in return for skipping the bid for the Kunashiri project. Marubeni was reportedly very keen on winning the power plant deal, the sources added.
Mitsui won the contract with a bid of 1.992 billion yen, which was 99.9 percent of the estimated price of 1.994 billion yen. Sumitomo and Kanematsu submitted bids of around 2.2 billion yen, prosecutors said.