Two more men have been arrested in connection with suspected payoffs by Seibu Railway Co. to a corporate racketeer, bringing the number of arrests in the case to 11, Tokyo police said.
Arrested Saturday were Reijiro Kuboyama, 57, an executive of Seibu Real Estate Sales Co., and Shigeru Usuki, 58, a real estate broker in Kanagawa Prefecture.
Kuboyama is suspected of colluding with Seiichi Ikura, managing director of Seibu at the time, to sell plots of land in Kanagawa Prefecture in January and May 2001 below market price to a company linked with "sokaiya" racketeer Ryuya Haga.
The police believe Ikura was hoping that Haga would not cause disruptions at a Seibu Railway shareholders' meeting if given the expected proceeds from the resale of the land.
The resale was conducted by a real estate company in Yokohama where Haga served as an adviser. Haga and Usuki received 88 million yen in profits from the resale, police said.
Ikura and Haga are among those who had been arrested earlier for their alleged involvement in the case.