Four officials of Marubeni Chikusan Corp. and a senior executive of a meat-packing company were arrested Thursday over a scam to pass off imported chicken as prime domestic poultry.
A joint task force of the Miyagi and Iwate prefectural police apprehended them on suspicion of defrauding wholesalers who purchased the chickens and of violating the Unfair Competition Prevention Law, which bans misleading consumers about a product's origin.
The suspects include Akihiro Yoshikawa, 47, former chief of Marubeni Chikusan's Tohoku region marketing department, and Yasushi Sato, 45, the company's former Sendai branch head.
The remaining three are Tatsuya Goto, 42, former acting head of the Sendai branch; Shinya Chiba, 30, an employee at the branch; and Yuji Sugiyama, the 54-year-old senior managing director of Sugiyama Shoten, a meat-packing company in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture.