Saburo Sato, a 61-year-old secretary to Koichi Kato, former secretary general of the Liberal Democratic Party, accepted money from construction firms for approving their bids for public works projects in Yamagata Prefecture, sources close to the case said Saturday.
The reward for influence-peddling was between 3 percent and 5 percent of the budgets of the public works projects, they said.
It was not immediately known whether Kato was aware of Sato's actions.