Japanese former Vice Defense Minister Takemasa Moriya, who was accused of taking bribes while in post from defense equipment trader Yamada Corp., admitted the charges on Monday during the first hearing of the case at the Tokyo District Court.
Moriya, 63, pleaded guilty of accepting from the trader various types of bribes worth of a total of 12.49 million yen (about 122,000 U.S. dollars), and apologized for committing such crimes.
He also admitted perjury in parliament shortly after the case was exposed late last year.
Several officials of the trader also pleaded guilty of bribing Moriya.
Moriya was arrested in November 2007. He was charged of accepting about 120 trips worth of about 8.86 million yen from August 2003 to April 2007, and receiving about 3.63 million yen in cash from May 2004 to February 2006.
Moriya's case, together with the Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF) warships' consecutive collisions with civil vessels and intelligence leakage through MSDF officers' personal computers in the following several months, put Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda's government in an awkward position and forced Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba to reform the ministry.
Source:Xinhua
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