The Foreign Ministry on Thursday fired an official who had been indicted earlier in the day for allegedly padding hotel bills and swindling the government out of public money, Deputy Vice Foreign Minister Kyoji Komachi said.

Dismissed in disgrace was Akio Asakawa, 56, a former assistant director at the First West Europe Division of the ministry's European Affairs Bureau. Asakawa handled logistics work for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Osaka in 1995.

He was arrested Sept. 6 on suspicion of defrauding the government in March 1996 of 423 million yen by padding hotel bills.

Asakawa is the fifth official to be fired from the ministry in money-related scandals this year.

"We deeply apologize to the Japanese people for having to dismiss another official in this series of scandals," Komachi told an evening news conference.

Ambassador to Poland Hideaki Ueda, a superior of Asakawa's while Asakawa was head of the APEC meeting secretariat, was reprimanded by Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka. As penance, Ueda voluntarily paid the ministry an amount equivalent to 20 percent of three months' salary.

Vice Foreign Minister Yoshiji Nogami, then head of the Economic Affairs Bureau, was punished with a 10 percent pay cut for one month.

Five other officials voluntarily paid an amount equivalent to 10 percent of one month's pay.

Komachi also revealed that the APEC secretariat spent 1.3 million yen on an internal party by drawing from funds Asakawa held at the Hotel New Otani in Tokyo. Asakawa, suspected of padding at least 43 million yen in hotel bills, pooled the surplus money in the New Otani account.

The party was held at the hotel in November 1995 to close the APEC forum. It was attended by around 100 staff, Komachi said.

Additionally, Asakawa and other staff at his First West Europe Division held two going-away parties in 2000 and earlier this year by using Asakawa's pooled funds at the New Otani. Each party cost around 100,000 yen, he said.

Komachi claimed that in all these cases, staff attending the parties were unaware that the expenses were covered by illegally pooled funds. The ministry will not punish these staff members, he added.

"All those parties were held by Asakawa and paid for out of his pooled funds," Komachi said.

However, Ueda told the ministry he would take responsibility by paying back 1.3 million yen for the APEC party, Komachi said.

Asked about media reports that ministry officials were staying at Hotel New Otani free of charge, Komachi conceded that ministry staff involved in APEC preparatory meetings in Tokyo ahead of the Osaka meeting had stayed at the hotel between Oct. 2 and Oct. 13 using money drawn from the pooled funds.

Some 30 rooms were booked for that period, costing more than 4 million yen, Komachi said.