Japanese police arrested Kinuko Iwamoto, former chancellor of Tokyo Women's Medical University, on Monday on suspicion of breach of trust involving fictitious payments of construction consulting fees by the university, people familiar with the investigation said.

Iwamoto, 78, is suspected of having the university illegally pay about ¥120 million in consulting fees to an architect between July 2018 and February 2020 over the construction of a new school building, the people said.

Tokyo's Metropolitan Police Department concluded that there was no justifiable ground for calculating the amount of fees, suspecting that the money spent was funneled back to Iwamoto and used for personal purposes, according to the people.

The architect started working as a construction consultant to the university in April 2016 and initially received between ¥40,000 and ¥50,000 per day, according to people familiar with the matter and a third-party committee.

In February 2018, Iwamoto, then vice chancellor, proposed raising the fees. The university's board approved the proposal without any specific discussion. The university paid about ¥309.3 million to the architect for about three-and-a-half years until February 2022.

Iwamoto became chancellor at the university in April 2019. She was dismissed in August last year over allegations about illegal expenditures linked to the university's alumnae association, Shiseikai.

The Tokyo police searched the university headquarters and Iwamoto's home in March last year for alleged aggravated breach of trust, suspecting that Shiseikai paid about ¥20 million in salaries to an aide to Iwamoto although the aide actually did not work for the organization.