The Chilean wife of a former housing authority executive who was arrested this week in Tokyo over a suspected 1.42 billion yen embezzlement case said Thursday she has no intention of returning the money her husband gave her.
Anita Ester Alvarado Munoz, 29, told reporters in a restaurant she owns in Santiago that she will not return the money, claiming it was given to her by her 44-year-old husband, Yuji Chida, who was arrested Monday.
Chida, a former accounting manager at Aomori Prefectural Housing Supply Public Corp., was arrested in connection with the embezzlement of 23.6 million yen on two occasions in October from a bank account of the housing authority's president.
Chida has already admitted embezzling 1.42 billion yen from the housing corporation over a period of eight years starting in 1994, according to investigative sources. Of this total, 500 million yen is believed to have been sent to Alvarado, whom he married after meeting in Aomori in 1997, the sources said.