OSAKA -- The Osaka District Court sentenced the former head of the Yasuda hospital group to three years in prison April 14 and fined him 1 million yen for swindling local governments out of 590 million yen.
Lawyers for Mototaka Yasuda, 77, immediately appealed the ruling. The court also gave two-year terms, suspended for four years, to Saburo Konishi, 68, former chief accountant of Yasuda Hospital, and to Emiko Omura, 50, former head nurse at the hospital, for conspiring with Yasuda.
"Judging from medical records, Yasuda's purpose of offering medical treatment lay solely in moneymaking," said presiding Judge Shunsuke Imai. "For him, patients were nothing but tools."