Police raided the office of a liquor retailer union in Tokyo on Tuesday on suspicion that its former secretary general was involved in embezzling pension funds and failing to collect about 14.4 billion yen in foreign investment funds.

According to an in-house investigation by the All Japan Liquor Merchants Co-operative Association, about 190 million yen related to its mutual pension business is unaccounted for.

Police suspect the 49-year-old former secretary general, who was in charge of the union's pension investments, embezzled the money by transferring it from the pension fund to his own account, sources close to the investigation said.

He operated the account under the name of Shuichi Suzuki, who is not a pensioner, and transferred money into it on more than 20 occasions starting in 1991, according to the in-house investigation and other sources.

Of the 190 million, yen the union filed a complaint against the former secretary general for alleged embezzlement of 25 million yen of corporate funds in 1999. The seven-year statute of limitations has run out on the rest of the transfers.

About 50 million yen transferred to a different account also remains unaccounted for. The total amount of money unaccounted for is around 240 million yen.

On the failure to collect 14.4 billion yen in foreign investment funds, police suspect the former secretary general committed breach of trust and caused the union to lose money, according to the sources.

In a decision by the secretary general, whose name was not released, the union invested the 14.4 billion yen between January and May 2003 after the mutual pension business, which started in 1983, did not perform well in 2002.

The union was then unable to collect most of the money because the British company in which it invested collapsed in June.

Police also raided the former secretary general's house in Setagaya Ward, Tokyo.