Police searched the headquarters of Bigmotor on Friday on suspicion of property destruction over dying roadside trees in front of the outlets of the Japanese used car dealer, according to investigative sources.
It is the first time that a search has been conducted at the company's headquarters in Tokyo's Minato Ward in connection with the issue of dying trees. Bigmotor has been hit by a car insurance fraud scandal.
Around 9:45 a.m., some 35 people, including officers from Tokyo's Metropolitan Police Department and the Kanagawa Prefectural Police, carrying cardboard boxes and carts headed for the company's headquarters on the 20th floor of the Roppongi Hills complex from an underground parking lot of the building.
The MPD searched nine Bigmotor outlets in Tokyo on Sept. 8, after it accepted a damage report filed by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government over dying roadside trees. The Kanagawa police searched three Bigmotor outlets in Kanagawa Prefecture on Sept. 6.
A soil survey by the Tokyo government detected three types of herbicides, including glyphosate, in areas near nine of 14 Bigmotor outlets facing Tokyo metropolitan roads. It also came to light that 20 trees had been cut down in front of an outlet in the city of Tama in western Tokyo.
Similar cases have been reported at outlets in Ibaraki, Gunma, Saitama, Shizuoka, Aichi, Hyogo, Saga and Fukuoka prefectures, and local governments have filed damage reports.
The land ministry announced that soil sampled in areas near a total of nine outlets in Fukui, Nagano, Yamaguchi, Kagawa, Ehime, Fukuoka and Nagasaki prefectures along national roads were found to contain herbicide ingredients. In addition to filing damage reports with respective prefectural police departments, the ministry plans to seek compensation from Bigmotor after restoring the patches of soil to their original conditions.