Ryuichi Koike, who on Tuesday went on trial for allegedly extorting huge sums from five of Japan's biggest financial institutions, showed no emotion when he heard about the recent collapse of Yamaichi Securities Co., according to sources.
Yamaichi, the nation's fourth-largest brokerage, allegedly provided him with 107 million yen in illegal payoffs. It filed for voluntary closure on Nov. 24. Upon hearing the news, Koike, 54, reportedly said, "It would be natural."
Koike, who allegedly extorted 12.4 billion yen from Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank and the Big Four brokerages, has been detained at the Tokyo Detention House in Kosuge, Tokyo, since his arrest in May. During voluntary questioning, he denied having demanded money from Nomura Securities Co., allegedly the largest source of his supposed Big Four payoffs, saying the firm voluntarily gave him money, according to investigators.
Later, after his arrest, he remained silent over the matter, investigators say. He reportedly explained his silence to his lawyer by saying: "I am not trying to prove I'm innocent. I made up my mind not to talk when I came (to the detention house)."
On June 5, former managers of Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank were arrested over the payoffs. Soon afterward, Koike broke his silence and admitted receiving loans from a DKB-affiliated finance company as well as payoffs from Nomura. When Koike learned of the June 29 suicide of Kuniji Miyazaki, who had quit as DKB chairman over the scandal, he reportedly wept, and said, "I can't stand it."
At present, he spends most of his time reading a 26-volume historical work on Tokugawa Ieyasu, the late-16th century warrior who founded the Tokugawa shogunate, sources said.