The Tokyo District Public Prosecutor's Office mistakenly faxed a witness account about indicted lawmaker Muneo Suzuki's bribery case to a Tokyo real estate firm in June, a top official of the office said Tuesday.

The fax was supposed to be sent to a prosecutor in charge at the Tokyo District Public Prosecutor's Office, but an official from the office, who was in Obihiro, Hokkaido, at the time, accidentally faxed it to the wrong recipient, Kenichi Sado, deputy head of the office, told a news conference.

The phone numbers were apparently similar, he said.

At the time of the mishap, members of the Tokyo prosecutors' special investigative squad had been sent to the Obihiro branch of the Kushiro District Public Prosecutor's Office, he said.

Although the official discovered later that he had made the mistake, he did not report it to his boss, according to the deputy prosecutor general.

When the real estate firm called the Obihiro branch to inform it of the mistake, another official who answered the phone simply asked the real estate firm to dispose of the document, he said.

The prosecutor's office apologized to the witness Monday after a weekly journal learned of the error and inquired about it at the office, he said.

They were there to investigate whether Suzuki had received bribes from Yamarin, a logging firm in Obihiro.

According to the prosecutor, the witness had close ties to Yamarin, and the faxed account contained information the witness had provided regarding the close relationship between Suzuki and the firm.

"What happened was extremely regrettable," Sado told reporters. "We will take steps to prevent such a mistake from recurring. We are also considering punishing the officials."

Suzuki was indicted July 10 on a charge of receiving 5 million yen from a Yamarin executive on Aug. 4, 1998, as a reward for pressuring the Forestry Agency to forge a business deal with the company.

The company had been punished over unauthorized logging in a national forest and allegedly had asked to be given a contract worth as much as it would have made while it was suspended from bidding.

At the time, Suzuki had just become a deputy director of the Cabinet Secretariat.