The Tokyo District Court handed down a suspended 18-month prison term Tuesday to a former executive of the defunct trading house Itoman Corp. for destroying evidence of tax evasion at the martial arts promoter K-1.
Prosecutors had sought an 18-month prison term for Suemitsu Ito, 59, a former Itoman managing director who is currently out on bail. His sentence was suspended for three years.
Ito abused his knowledge of tax matters and played an "extremely important role in the crime," according to presiding Judge Yoshinobu Iida.
Nonetheless, Iida said the sentence should be suspended because Ito became involved in K-1's tax evasion after he was asked to do so by its former president, Kazuyoshi Ishii, 50.
According to the court, after the Tokyo Regional Taxation Bureau probed K-1 in September 2001, Ito gave K-1 advice on how to make it appear that the company did not have taxable income for two years.
In November 2001 and March 2002, Ito made it appear as if K-1 had failed to invite former world boxing heavyweight champion Mike Tyson to Japan and had suffered a 1 billion yen penalty for breach of contract.