The nationalized Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan filed a criminal complaint Friday against its former top executives, accusing them of falsifying the bank's balance sheets and illegally paying dividends to shareholders without earning enough profit.
The move sets the stage for law enforcement authorities to launch raids on several ex-LTCB executives for suspected breach of trust. The investigators are believed to have already questioned Katsunobu Onogi, 63, who served as LTCB president from 1995 to last September.
Since the LTCB was declared insolvent and placed under state control last October, Tokyo prosecutors and the Metropolitan Police Department have been looking into whether the bank's former executives should be held liable for actions that led to the bank's collapse.