A former aide to former lawmaker Muneo Suzuki received a suspended two-year prison term Friday for conspiring to accept 1.1 million yen in bribes and concealing 100 million yen in income from Liberal Democratic Party-related ticket sales and donations in 1997 and 1998.
Jun Tada, 52, former policy secretary to Suzuki, was sentenced to two years in prison by the Tokyo District Court, which suspended the sentence for four years.
Tada had maintained his innocence throughout his trial.
According to presiding Judge Yutaka Inoue, Tada and Suzuki, a former LDP heavyweight and ex-Lower House member, accepted 6 million yen in bribes from Hokkaido-based construction company Shimada Kensetsu in 1997 and 1998, when Suzuki headed the Hokkaido Development Agency.
In return, Suzuki instructed the agency's high-ranking official to award the company all the public works projects it wanted to handle.
Separately, Tada and Suzuki received 5 million yen in bribes from another Hokkaido-based lumber company, Yamarin, in August 1998, the judge said, adding that Suzuki then agreed to use his influence to ensure that the company was treated better following a seven-month administrative punishment imposed on it in June 1998 for illegal logging in national forests.
In a violation of the Political Funds Control Law, the judge said, Tada failed to declare 100 million yen in income from party-related ticket sales and political donations in a 1998 political-funds report for 21 Seiki Seisaku Kenkyukai, Suzuki's fund management body.
The judge said Suzuki used 36 million yen from this fund to construct his own residence in Tokyo's upscale Minami-Aoyama district.
Suzuki, 56, separately faces a criminal trial on charges of bribery, perjury and falsification of political-funding reports.
He quit the ruling LDP in March 2002 but rejected calls to resign as a lawmaker.
He did not run, however, in last November's election.