Police on Monday arrested a bureaucrat at the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries who was allegedly wined and dined to the tune of about 1.9 million yen by an agricultural cooperative in Kagawa Prefecture in return for favors involving farm subsidies.

Kinya Mizokami, 44, now assigned to the Hokkaido Prefectural Government on loan from the ministry, is suspected of having his bills at expensive bars in Tokyo footed by the Shikoku Okawa cooperative from 1997 in return for helping the group win subsides from the government in and around 1996, police said.

Police also arrested Yoshinobu Hirose, 70, the head of the cooperative, based in the town of Sangawa, and Taishi Yamashita, 56, who heads the cooperative's sales and development department, on suspicion of bribery, police said.

Mizokami, who met Hirose and Yamashita in the early 1980s while he was assigned to the neighboring town of Nagao, was working in the administration section of the ministry's Agricultural Production Bureau when he allegedly extended favors to the cooperative in around 1996, police said.

Mizokami, an elite "career-track" official, has held posts in the ministry's Agricultural Structure Improvement Bureau and other departments, police said, adding that he was assigned to Hokkaido in April 1997. He was scheduled to return to the farm ministry at the beginning of April.

The allegations against Mizokami surfaced in the course of investigations into a bribery case in which former farm ministry official Tsuguo Joko has been indicted on charges of accepting 500,000 yen in bribes.

The money was allegedly in return for helping the Shikoku Okawa cooperative benefit from a government project to promote farm products.

Joko, 47, took the bribes in cash on or around Feb. 19, 1997, the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office said in the indictment.

The farm ministry said earlier that it has punished 19 officials, including Joko, who were found by its internal investigation to have had shady ties with agricultural cooperatives nationwide.

But Mizokami's arrest may embarrass the ministry because he was not even among the targets of its investigation.

Wining and dining of public officials by the private sector used to be a widespread practice and not officially condemned. Investigative authorities in the late 1990s, however, started to crack down on the practice as being little different from outright bribery involving the handing over of cash.

Shirakawa to defense

NIIGATA (Kyodo) Lower House member Katsuhiko Shirakawa said Monday that he still believes in the innocence of his private secretary, who was arrested Sunday along with two other suspects in connection with the Niigata Prefectural Police's alleged coverup of a driving offense.

Shirakawa told a news conference that his private secretary Akio Fujimaki, 39, did not ask Norio Osawa, a superintendent and head of the force's traffic section, to cover up a speeding violation by a Niigata insurance salesman.

Niigata police on Monday morning searched Shirakawa's office, Fujimaki's house and other locations in the prefecture on the Japan Sea coast in connection with the case.

Also arrested Sunday night were Kazuhiro Kawazumi, 39, a company employee and former secretary to Shirakawa, and Akira Kamoi, 45, who allegedly asked Kawazumi and Fujimaki to help have his speeding conviction erased from the computer.

Osawa, 60, and Nozomu Sonehara, 50, an assistant inspector in the Niigata police force, were arrested March 19 on suspicion of concealing Kamoi's traffic violation by erasing computer records. Kamoi is a resident of the town of Itakura in the prefecture.

Police allege that Kamoi gave Kawazumi 60,000 yen in gift certificates for help in the case. Kawazumi took half the certificates and delivered the rest to Fujimaki, an allegation Fujimaki has denied.

According to police investigations, Kamoi asked Fujimaki via Kawazumi in October to help cover up the infraction. Osawa then directed Sonehara to erase computer records of the violation.

Shirakawa, 54, a former chairman of the National Public Safety Commission, which oversees the nation's police, has acknowledged that Fujimaki acted as a go-between in the case, but insisted it was not a serious matter.

A Liberal Democratic Party legislator, Shirakawa was appointed home affairs minister and chairman of the National Public Safety Commission by then Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto in November 1996.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Mikio Aoki said on Monday that he takes the arrests of the lawmaker's secretaries seriously.

"The arrests are a very regrettable and serious matter," Aoki told a news conference. "Lawmakers must not take part in any acts that violate a law."

Niigata police have been under fire over its handling of the case of a 19-year-old woman who was abducted as a schoolgirl and held captive by a man for more than nine years before being rescued by health workers.