Police arrested three people including a member of the municipal assembly of Yatsushiro, Kumamoto Prefecture, on Thursday on suspicion of accepting bribes from a contractor for the construction of a new municipal government building.

A total of about ?17 billion was spent on the municipal government building, which opened in February 2022. Of the total cost, more than ?12 billion was raised by selling bonds for reconstruction after the April 2016 Kumamoto earthquakes.

According to investigative sources, the municipal assembly member, Yukio Narimatsu, 54, and two others are suspected of acting at the request of a former head of the Kyushu regional branch of Maeda, a Tokyo-based construction firm, in relation to the construction project between 2016 and December 2019. In return, they allegedly received ?60 million in cash at Narimatsu¡¯s home around June 2021.

The two others arrested were Teruyuki Matsuura, an 84-year-old former Yatsushiro municipal assembly member, and Tadasuke Sonokawa, the 61-year-old head of a local construction firm.

Regarding the construction project, the city adopted Maeda¡¯s proposal, mediated by Narimatsu. A consortium including Maeda won the project contract for about ?11.8 billion, but the value of the contract was later increased to about ?13 billion.

Last October, the Kumamoto Prefectural Police Department received a criminal complaint about the bribery case. Meanwhile, Tokyo¡¯s Metropolitan Police Department was informed in January by Maeda of the results of an internal investigation conducted by the company. The Kumamoto and Tokyo police departments then launched a joint investigation.