The Metropolitan Police Department raided the head offices of Mitsubishi Estate Co. and Hitachi Ltd. on Wednesday over alleged illegal payoffs to a "sokaiya" corporate extortionist.

Nineteen investigators arrived at Hitachi's head office in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward shortly after 10 a.m. Wednesday, a day after two Mitsubishi Estate officials and one Hitachi official were arrested for allegedly paying beach house fees to corporate extortionist Terubo Tei, 53.

Twelve officers also raided the head office of Mitsubishi Estate in the same ward to seize documents possibly related to the sokaiya case. Teruo Uchino, a 53-year-old deputy manager in Hitachi's administrative department and the two Mitsubishi officials -- Kazuyuki Yabu, a 44-year-old deputy general manager of the general affairs department, and Masataka Kozono, a 41-year-old member of that department -- are suspected of violating the Commercial Code by paying off Tei, police said.

The three have admitted the allegations, police added. The move follows the arrests of an official from Mitsubishi Electric Corp. and another from Toshiba Corp. on Nov. 10, also over alleged payoffs to Tei.

Three Mitsubishi Motors Corp. executives have been charged with violating the Commercial Code by paying Tei and another racketeer a total of 9.3 million yen between 1995 and 1997 in exchange for assurances that the company's shareholders' meetings would not be interrupted. Police believe that Tei also received annual payments of 500,000 yen to 950,000 yen from Hitachi starting in 1986, and 1 million yen to 1.1 million yen from real estate giant Mitsubishi Estate during the same period.

The payments were made ostensibly for the use of a beach house on the coast in Fujisawa, Kanagawa Prefecture, but few employees actually used the facility, police said.

The statute of limitations for prosecution has run out on any payments made by the companies before 1994. Tei has already been indicted on charges of receiving illegal payments from Mitsubishi Motors. Police are particularly interested in how Tei pressed Mitsubishi Estate and Hitachi to accept his demands for increases in the charges, investigation sources said.