Twenty-three officers of the Fukuoka Prefectural Police were punished Thursday to take responsibility for alleged bribe-taking by former officers in return for providing investigative information to operators of a local casino.
Among those punished were current Fukuoka police head Hiroshi Yanagisawa and his predecessor, Masanori Nakamura, who were slapped with reprimands from the chief of the National Police Agency. The number of officers punished is unusually large for a case of this nature, observers said.
Four former police officers have been arrested and indicted in connection with the casino scandal since December, and they have been dismissed. In addition, one of the four -- Kasuhiro Matsuo, a 57-year-old former assistant inspector -- is suspected of taking bribes from a gangster in return for inside information.
Prosecutors say the four pocketed some 31 million yen in bribes through the allegations cited in their indictments alone.