A record 2,355 listed and unlisted companies nationwide held their annual shareholders' meetings June 27 with 10,000 police officers mobilized to keep "sokaiya" corporate extortionists in check, the National Police Agency said.
There were no reports of sokaiya-related incidents.
The total exceeds last year's record by 114 companies and represents 88 percent of all firms scheduled to hold shareholders' meetings in June, NPA officials said. The meetings went ahead despite controversy over the nature of such gatherings and in light of alleged illicit payoffs by Nomura Securities Co. and Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank to a sokaiya racketeer.
Nomura and Dai-Ichi Kangyo are accused of providing a huge amount of profits to sokaiya Ryuichi Koike to keep their shareholders' meetings from being disrupted. Sokaiya threaten to disrupt these meetings unless they are paid off.
The concentration of meetings on one day has long been criticized as contrary to the interests of shareholders who hold stock in more than one company. About 10,000 police officers were deployed at about 2,200 shareholders' meetings nationwide to keep watch on sokaiya, NPA officials said.
The Metropolitan Police Department said that in Tokyo alone, 86 sokaiya racketeers were confirmed attending 34 companies' shareholders' meetings on June 27. The figure showed improvement from last year's figure when 176 sokaiya attended 79 meetings in Tokyo.
Of the 86 sokaiya this year, 10 were confirmed at the meeting of Mitsubishi Corp., and five each at Takefuji Corp., Fuji Bank and All Nippon Airways Co., according to police sources. Ajinomoto Co., Nomura Securities and Dai-Ichi Kangyo -- the firms all embroiled in recent payoff scandals, each had one sokaiya at their meetings, the sources said.
Attracting the closest media attention were the Nomura and Dai-Ichi Kangyo meetings, which both started at 10 a.m. in Tokyo. Facing criticism for previously closed meetings, the brokerage and bank opened the gatherings to the public.