The Kobe District Court on Tuesday acquitted two former executives of now-defunct Snow Brand Foods Co. of defrauding the government of subsidies earmarked for the beef industry after the mad cow disease outbreak in 2001.
Prosecutors had demanded a three-year prison term for former executive managing director Hiromi Sakurada, 63, and 30 months' imprisonment for managing director Masami Inoue, 62, on charges of abusing the government's beef buyback program and defrauding the state of some 200 million yen by claiming imported beef was domestic.
The program was introduced to deal with a growing inventory of unsold domestic beef in the wake of the discovery of Japan's first cow infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy in September 2001.
In acquitting the pair, presiding Judge Kenji Sugimori said statements implicating the executives that were given by five company officials who were actually involved in the swindle were weak in terms of reliability.