OSAKA -- An official of the Defense Facilities Administration Agency has been arrested for attempting to swindle 300 million yen out of a company executive by offering a bogus business transaction with the Defense Agency, prosecutors said Tuesday. Tatsuro Kitamura, 43, a labor relations official at the agency, was arrested with Yoshio Eguchi, an unemployed man of no fixed address, by the special investigative team of the Osaka District Public Prosecutor's Office. They allegedly forged a document in the name of the vice defense minister offering a 57-year-old Osaka-based company executive a bogus transaction to supply military goods to the Defense Agency. The investigators searched Kitamura's house in Narita, Chiba Prefecture, on Tuesday. to obtain evidence. According to the prosecutors, Kitamura and Eguchi conspired to defraud the executive, who was not named and whose company was trying to supply goods to the agency. In several meetings in October and November, the accused allegedly told the executive that if a 6 billion yen supply contract was signed, the agency would pay the firm 3 billion yen in advance. Showing the executive a set of bogus documents in the name of the vice defense chief, the two allegedly told the executive that the contract would go to his firm following payment of 300 million yen, the prosecutors said. The executive grew suspicious and contacted the agency, only to learn that the documents had been forged. Kitamura joined the Defense Facilities Administration Agency in 1981. Last summer, he joined a project team charged with discussing labor control reforms for workers at U.S. bases in Japan. His colleagues said they were surprised to hear the news of his arrest. , adding that they had not noticed any changes in his behavior recently.
