The Foreign Ministry will urge major trading house Mitsui & Co. to temporarily refrain from bidding on projects related to official development assistance, ministry sources said Thursday.
The ministry is also poised to request that ODA recipient countries exclude Mitsui from bidding on such projects, following the arrests of three Mitsui employees for allegedly rigging the bid for a government-funded power project on Russian-held Kunashiri Island in 2000, according to the sources.
The three Mitsui employees are believed to have conspired with two trading firms to win the government project and wrongfully obtained bidding information from Foreign Ministry officials, according to Tokyo prosecutors.