The sacked Foreign Ministry logistics chief suspected of embezzlement and inflating expenses for overseas trips by prime ministers submitted a receipt for a hotel stay for a night when a prime ministerial entourage was aboard an airplane, ministry sources said Friday.

Katsutoshi Matsuo, 55, claimed that on Nov. 13, 1998, the 80-member delegation of the late Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi stayed in St. Petersburg, during Obuchi's Russia visit, when in fact the delegation returned to Tokyo that night, the sources said.

Obuchi met then Russian President Boris Yeltsin on Nov. 12 in the first official visit by a Japanese prime minister to Russia since 1973. The officials accompanying Obuchi stayed at a hotel in Moscow on Nov. 11 and 12.

The Japanese group originally planned to visit St. Petersburg the following day, but canceled the trip after Yeltsin was taken ill, the sources said.

The delegation arrived in Japan on Nov. 14 directly from Moscow.

An official of the Japanese Consulate General in St. Petersburg recently said that no reservations were made for hotels in the city as the prime minister's trip was canceled.

Matsuo was arrested March 10 on suspicion of fraud for allegedly swindling 42 million yen from the discretionary fund for diplomatic activities on three overseas trips by two prime ministers -- Ryutaro Hashimoto and Obuchi -- between 1997 and 1999.

He allegedly embezzled 7 million yen by making false logistics requests to the government before Hashimoto's trip to Saudi Arabia in 1997.

Matsuo is suspected of using a similar method to swindle the government out of 26 million yen before Obuchi's trip to Vietnam in December 1998 to attend an Association of Southeast Asian Nations meeting, police said.

The remaining 9 million yen was pocketed after Obuchi's visit to Jordan in February 1999 to attend the king's funeral, the police said.

Matsuo forged bills for accommodation fees for two nights, even though the delegation only stayed in hotels for eight hours, they said.

Matsuo organized 46 trips for prime ministers' delegations for six years up to August 1999 as head of the ministry's now-defunct Overseas Visit Support Division.

Matsuo is suspected of embezzling several hundred million yen in total during the period and used the money for personal purposes, such as buying racehorses and a condominium.