Tadashi Okuda, a former chairman of Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank, was sentenced Wednesday to nine months in prison, suspended for five years, for illegally lending some 11.8 billion yen to a "sokaiya" corporate racketeer in a scandal that shocked the nation's finance industry.
The Tokyo District Court found Okuda, 67, guilty of conspiring with other executives to extend loans to Ryuichi Koike, 56, via Daiwa Shinyo, a nonbank moneylender affiliated with the city bank, during the period spanning 1994 to 1996 in violation of the Commercial Code.
Koike, who was given a nine-month prison sentence in April, had threatened to disrupt shareholders' meetings unless the loans were made.