The former president of an eel importer was sentenced to 4 1/2 years in prison Thursday for swindling a government-affiliated aid body out of 1 billion yen in official development assistance funds for an eel-raising project in China.
The Tokyo District Court found Nobuko Komine, 57, guilty of using the money to run her struggling company and for causing financial damage to the former Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund, an aid body that merged with the Export-Import Bank of Japan in October 1999 and is now known as the Japan Bank for International Cooperation.
Komine of Nissei Sangyo, an importer and retailer of eels in Chiba Prefecture that went bankrupt in March 1998, applied for the loan from the OECF in March 1994, saying the company would spend the money to raise eels at a joint venture it had set up in China's Guangdong Province, according to the court.
Komine said the venture had asked her to raise the money quickly and that the company would build ponds. She then defrauded the OECF out of 1.05 billion yen deposited in a bank account by telling an OECF official that a Chinese bank had promised to guarantee the loan, it said.
Presiding Judge Sota Kurihara faulted the government aid agency for failing to confirm the Chinese bank guarantee and for violating OECF internal rules.