A former Foreign Ministry official pleaded guilty Tuesday to defrauding the government of 422 million yen by padding hotel bills during meetings of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Osaka in 1995.

During his first trial session at the Tokyo District Court, Akio Asakawa, 56, former assistant director at the ministry's European Affairs Bureau, admitted that he padded hotel bills for the November 1995 APEC ministerial meeting at Hotel New Otani Osaka and for a preparatory meeting in Tokyo the previous month. He later used part of the surplus funds for personal expenses.

Asakawa padded the bills by 43.87 million yen to 422 million yen, prosecutors said. While his lawyers claimed the 387.28 million yen was the legitimate cost of the services provided by the hotel chain, prosecutors have charged Asakawa for defrauding the entire amount on the grounds that it was sought by fraudulent means.

At the same trial, Shozo Saito, 52, director of sales at the Hotel New Otani in Tokyo, admitted that he collaborated with Asakawa in the case concerning the Tokyo meeting by charging 109.6 million yen in padded hotel bills to the Foreign Ministry on Asakawa's advice.

Saito said that he allowed Asakawa to use 17 million yen worth of hotel services between 1996 and 2001 using funds collected from the padded bills, which were pooled at the hotel. He also admitted he spent some 30 million yen from the padded amount himself.

Asakawa, who was fired by the ministry in September, told the court that he spent some 17.32 million yen of the surplus money for personal expenses. He also apologized for damaging the public's interest.

"I will spend the rest of my life compensating to the public, and will return the 17.32 million yen that I have already spent on personal expenses to the government as early as possible," Asakawa told the court.

Asakawa joined the ministry in 1963 and was engaged in logistics work for international conferences. He was responsible for organizing hotel accommodation and limousine services.

In their opening statement on Tuesday, prosecutors said Asakawa had Saito charge 109.64 million yen in padded hotel bills for the 1995 APEC preparatory meeting in Tokyo. The bills were 12.03 million yen more than the legitimate cost of the service, they said.

As for the APEC meeting in Osaka, Asakawa arranged for an employee of the New Otani hotel to charge 312.51 million yen in hotels bills, which were padded by 31.83 million yen, they said.

In both cases, the surplus money was pooled at the New Otani, so that Asakawa could use hotel services for personal use, for free, they said.

Asakawa's case is one in series of scandals involving senior Foreign Ministry officials in fraud, embezzlement and bill-padding.

In November, prosecutors demanded a 10-year prison sentence for Asakawa's former colleague Katsutoshi Matsuo, who stands accused of embezzling 500 million yen from the Cabinet Secretariat's discretionary funds from 1997 to 1999.

Hiromu Kobayashi, another former assistant director at the Foreign Ministry, and his subordinate Tsutomu Okuma, have been charged with defrauding 22 million yen related to the Group of Eight summit in Okinawa in 2000.

And Makoto Mizutani, the former consul general in Denver, was dismissed in October for diverting government funds for personal purposes in 1999, although he was not criminally charged in the case.