The Tokyo District Court gave four former officials of consumer credit firm Nippon Shinpan Co. suspended prison terms Wednesday for paying a "sokaiya" racketeer to ensure its shareholders' meetings were not disrupted.

Among the four was Yoshihisa Oshio, 63, a former senior managing director of the company. The four were sentenced to between 10 and 12 months in prison, suspended for three years. Prosecutors had sought prison terms of 12 months for all the defendants.

Presiding Judge Koji Inaba said the terms were suspended after taking into account the fact that the company's senior management was also at fault for allowing payments to racketeers to continue over many years.

"The accused wasted the company's assets by continuing the payoffs to the sokaiya for the sake of near-term benefits for the company," the judge said, adding that it would be too harsh to blame the four executives solely for a policy that had also been carried out by their predecessors.

Sokaiya racketeer Kikuo Kondo, 60, was sentenced to two years in prison, suspended for five years. Prosecutors had demanded a two-year prison term for him.

According to the ruling, around 1974 Nippon Shinpan began paying Kondo to ensure that the company's shareholders' meetings went ahead smoothly.

The court found that the defendants gave a total of 27.5 million yen to Kondo between 1999 and 2002.

The statute of limitations on money illegally provided by Nippon Shinpan before 1999 had run out.

Sokaiya racketeers specialize in extorting money from companies in various ways, such as using embarrassing information to blackmail firms or threatening to cause trouble at shareholders' meetings by asking endless questions. Some business managers use racketeers to quell disruptions at shareholders' meetings by individuals or other groups.

The Commercial Code bans payments to sokaiya racketeers.