Tokyo police on the 4th arrested Yukiharu Koshino, 63, a former representative director of the Electronic Authentication System Council, on suspicion of special breach of trust in violation of the General Incorporated Associations Act. Investigators allege he caused the council about ¥175 million in losses over payments for equipment installed in pachinko parlors, the Asahi Shimbun reported, citing people involved in the investigation.
Koshino, a resident of Omiya Ward in Saitama, denies nothing in the account given so far. Police have not disclosed his position on the allegations.
How the payments worked
The council is a nonprofit that works to make sales data from pachinko parlors more transparent. Under the system, parlors pay machine manufacturers for equipment used to manage the lending of pachinko balls through the council. The manufacturers in turn buy parts from parts suppliers.
According to the investigators, Koshino arranged for a parts supplier to issue inflated invoices for machine parts and planned to take the excess for himself. The padding raised the price of the machines above what it should have been, and the council was made to pay about ¥175 million too much between around April 2022 and February 2023, the Asahi Shimbun reported.
¥6,500 per machine
The markup came to ¥6,500 per machine across several parts, applied to 24,500 machines. The excess was transferred from the parts supplier to a company run by Koshino as a "consulting fee" for work that did not take place, according to the investigators.