The country's youngest mayor was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of taking bribes over the installation of a water-cleaning system at a public school, police said.
Mayor Hiroto Fujii, 29, of Minokamo in Gifu Prefecture, is suspected of having accepted several hundred thousand yen from a 43-year-old acquaintance who runs a groundwater supply installation business and is on trial for fraud, police said.
Fujii, who won the mayoral election in June 2013 after running a cram school and serving as a local assembly member, denied having accepted bribes. But the businessman admitted to bribing the mayor, according to police.
The water-cleaning system was set up last August at the pool of a local junior high school from which Fujii had graduated, according to city officials.
The businessman was arrested earlier this year and is charged with defrauding a bank of some ¥10 million in loans by forging an order sheet from another city in the prefecture.