Former House of Councilors member Takao Koyama was served another arrest warrant by public prosecutors on Tuesday on suspicion of having an affiliate of scandal-hit mutual-aid foundation KSD pay the salaries of his two secretaries.

Koyama, 57, is suspected of having the KSD affiliate pay a total of 11.66 million yen in salaries for his two private secretaries on 21 occasions between January 1999 and September 2000, the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office said.

In return, Koyama, then parliamentary vice minister of the old Labor Ministry, allegedly lobbied to increase government subsidies for the Institute of Technologists, which was promoted by KSD from July 1998 to October 1999, prosecutors said, adding that Koyama has admitted the charge.

This marks the first time that legal authorities have recognized the act of shouldering the salaries of a lawmaker's secretaries as a bribe.

The prosecutors' move is likely to shock Diet members as it is widely recognized that a number of firms send staff to function as private secretaries to politicians or to support their election campaigns.

The prosecutors also served another arrest warrant on KSD's founder and former director, Tadao Koseki, 79, and arrested two senior officials, Katsuhiko Nakamura, 58, and Hiromichi Miura, 69, on suspicion of bribing Koyama through the affiliate by paying the salaries of his secretaries.

Koyama was indicted earlier the same day on charges of accepting 20 million yen in bribes from KSD, although he allegedly denied the charge that the money from KSD was political funds.

According to the indictment, Koyama accepted the bribes in early October 1996 from Koseki in return for asking questions in the Diet on behalf of KSD on two occasions in November 1995 and April 1996.

Koyama left the ruling Liberal Democratic Party on the day of his arrest, Jan. 16, and resigned from the Diet Jan. 29.

In an ongoing series of KSD scandals, Masakuni Murakami, a former head of the LDP's Upper House members, proposed the construction of the technologists' institute in parliamentary questions during a plenary session of the Diet. Murakami resigned on Jan. 15.

Fukushiro Nukaga, an LDP Lower House member, subsequently resigned as state minister in charge of economic and fiscal policy and information technology on Jan. 23 in the wake of allegations that his secretary received 15 million yen from KSD in 1999 and 2000.

LDP subsidized dorm

A group of Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers, including senior House of Councilors member Masakuni Murakami, in 1999 successfully prodded the then Labor Ministry to build a dormitory as part of a university project by the scandal-tainted mutual-aid foundation KSD, sources said Tuesday.

Members of the panel to promote the KSD-envisioned Institute of Technologists in Saitama Prefecture made the pitch in November 1999 in response to a request from then KSD President Tadao Koseki, the sources alleged.

The Labor Ministry subsequently added to the fiscal 2000 budget an additional subsidy of about 800 million yen for construction of the dorm for students, the sources said. Murakami, Shizuka Kamei, chairman of the LDP's Policy Affairs Research Council, former Transport Minister Takao Fujii and former Upper House lawmaker Takao Koyama were among those who attended a breakfast meeting with top Labor Ministry bureaucrats at a Tokyo hotel in November 1999, the sources said.

At the meeting, the sources said, Koseki called on the government to make the new university "a boarding school," emphasizing the need to build a dorm.

The lawmakers present initially balked at the suggestion but later agreed to build a dorm because prospective students would then come from other parts of the country, the sources said.

Kamei reportedly pressed the Labor Ministry for an increase in subsidies, saying: "We have to make it an attractive university for students. They need a gym and dorm. It's a request from the party."