Forty-seven companies allegedly involved in rigging bids for government construction projects also won contracts worth a combined 443.7 billion yen over the past five years for steel bridge orders placed by Japan Highway Public Corp., according to internal Japan Highway documents.
The companies' winning bids accounted for 91.5 percent of the value of orders placed by the governmental corporation in terms of initial construction costs, the documents show, raising suspicions of more bid-rigging.
Prosecutors searched the offices of the 47 companies in May in connection with a bid-rigging case involving government construction projects, and 26 of them, as well as eight of the firms' employees, were indicted June 15 on charges of violating the Antimonopoly Law.