An Osaka Bar Association panel has proposed that former Resolution and Collection Corp. chief Kohei Nakabo be punished for fraud, officials said Tuesday.
Nakabo, 74, also a former head of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, was accused of lying to financial institutions about key elements of a deal involving the government-backed debt-collection body and the sale of land in Osaka Prefecture owned by the real-estate company Asahi Juken to collect debts from 1997 to 1998.
A former president of an Asahi Juken subsidiary has asked the Osaka bar to punish Nakabo.
Nakabo submitted a letter of resignation to the Osaka Bar Association in October after being questioned by prosecutors over the allegations. But the bar has not accepted his resignation because it was examining the punishment request.
A bar committee will soon consider whether the group should approve the request.
The prosecutors decided in October not to indict Nakabo, saying the RCC "went too far in its collection of debts, and on the face of it the fraud charge would stand, but he did not gain personally from the transaction."
Nakabo was president of the bar federation between 1990 and 1992, and RCC chief between July 1996 and August 1999. He also served as special adviser to the late Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi and as a member of the government's advisory panel on the judicial system.