A former SoftBank Corp. employee who was arrested on suspicion of illegally obtaining company secrets at the instigation of Russian trade officials, has told investigators that he received tens of thousands of yen in cash from the officials each time he provided them with material, according to sources close to the investigation.
The Metropolitan Police Department's public safety division is investigating the total amount of money he received.
According to the sources, former SoftBank employee Yutaka Araki, 48, met a then official of the Russian trade representative in Japan several years ago. The official returned to Russia around the spring of 2017, and Araki later began meeting at bars and elsewhere with another official who was transferred to Japan as a senior diplomat in the same year.
Araki dined with the senior official once every two or three months, for a total of more than 10 times, and the official paid the check.
Amid these meetings, Araki started taking materials from SoftBank and providing them to the official at the official's request. According to the sources, Araki handed over several materials containing trade secrets, including work procedures regarding the firm's phone base stations that Araki provided in February last year.
After providing each batch of material, Araki received several tens of thousands of yen in cash as a reward at the following meeting.
The amount of cash varied, and is believed to have been high in the case of highly confidential materials. The MPD suspects the Russian official tried to obtain more confidential materials by increasing or decreasing the amount of the reward depending on the confidentiality of the information.
The MPD sent Araki to the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office on suspicion of violating the Unfair Competition Prevention Law on Monday.
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