Two former executives of a Nihon Keizai Shimbun Inc. affiliate were sentenced Tuesday to three years in prison for causing 3.18 billion yen in damages to the company through illegitimate issuance of promissory notes and embezzling 335 million yen in corporate funds in 2001.
The two are Koichi Shimada, 64, former president of the now-defunct TC Works, and Hideo Ogawa, 62, former senior managing director of the company. Prosecutors had demanded five years of imprisonment for both.
Presiding Judge Hironobu Murakami of the Tokyo District Court said in handing down the ruling that the pair committed the acts to hide their improper accounting by gaining cooperation from an ailing construction company to fake transactions for many years.
"The damage of about 3.5 billion yen is also large, and (the defendants') responsibility in their capacities as company executives is heavy," Murakami said.
According to the ruling, Shimada and Ogawa conspired with another colleague to issue promissory notes to provide financial aid to the construction company that had helped TC Works fabricate its financial results between February and August 2001, causing about 3.18 billion yen of harm to their company.
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