The Gifu District Court on Monday handed a suspended sentence to a 37-year-old former police officer for embezzling some 1.3 million yen from his police station.
Hisashi Hasebe was sentenced to 18 months in prison, suspended for three years.
In handing down his ruling, Judge Masayuki Suenaga said that as a result of embezzling money to repay debts, Hasebe had undermined public confidence in police.
According to the ruling, from April 1999 through March 2000, while serving as chief of the accounting division at Gifu Kita Police Station, Hasebe stole around 700,000 yen in cash brought to the station as lost items.
On two occasions in January this year, he also withdraw from the police station's bank account roughly 620,000 yen that was remitted to the account by the prefectural government to pay for the station's phone bills, the ruling said.