Police have decided to arrest Moriyoshi Kimura, president of Kimura Construction Co., and former company executives early this week on suspicion of submitting falsified financial statements to the infrastructure ministry, sources said.
Kimura Construction, which has been mired in the building quake-safety scandal, earned about 23 billion yen constructing about 40 buildings over six years from 1999 using data fabricated by architect Hidetsugu Aneha, who has since been stripped of his license, according to the sources.
The proceeds from constructing the defective buildings accounted for more than a third of the 63 billion yen the company earned from July 1999 to June 2005, the sources said.
The share has increased every year, reaching 60 percent in the year ending last June.
Moriyoshi Kimura, president of the bankrupt builder, has admitted his firm started window-dressing its financial statements eight years ago.
Police suspect the financially strapped company tried to win building orders for Aneha-designed properties, which generated fast money because he designed buildings relatively quickly, the sources said.
The police believe Kimura Construction, due to its financial woes, pressured Aneha to reduce construction costs, leading him to fabricate data on earthquake strength.
According to financial documents the company submitted to the Land, Infrastructure and Transport Ministry, its sales in the year that ended in June 2000 stood at 10.8 billion yen, of which 1.1 billion yen was derived from properties designed by Aneha.
In the year that ended in June 2005, proceeds related to Aneha accounted for 7.5 billion yen of 12.7 billion yen in the company's total sales.
The company increasingly turned to Aneha, who was known for his "quick jobs," to shorten construction periods.
According to the land ministry, Aneha fabricated quake-resistance data for 98 buildings, and Kimura Construction built 56 of them.
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