Ex - Lawmaker Receives Suspended Prison Sentence For Illegally Brokering Loans
A court in Tokyo has sentenced a former lawmaker to two years in prison, suspended for three years, for illegally brokering public loans for businesses more than 100 times between March 2020 and June 2021.
The Tokyo District Court on Tuesday handed down the sentence to Toyama Kiyohiko. He was also fined 1 million yen, or about 8,100 dollars. The 52-year-old was a Lower House member with the governing junior coalition partner Komeito. He once served as a state minister of finance.
Toyama and three others were indicted for brokering loans from the government-owned Japan Finance Corporation without being registered to operate a money-lending business.
The loans are part of an assistance program for businesses struggling amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Toyama pled guilty to the charges. Prosecutors had demanded a two-year prison term without suspension and a one-million-yen fine.
In handing down the sentence on Tuesday, Presiding Judge Niwa Toshihiko noted that the defendant freely accepted requests for his lobbying, which resulted in secured loans totaling about 3.7 billion yen, or about 30 million dollars. The judge added that most of the brokering came while the defendant was a sitting lawmaker, and the scale exceeded the usual level of accepting petitions as a politician.
Niwa also said the defendant never questioned whether the practice violated the law, and even received money as a reward in some cases.
He added that Toyama cannot evade criticism because his position at the time required a high level of ethics.