Japan's Lockheed scandal, which dominated headlines for a decade and epitomized political corruption, ended after 19 years Wednesday when the Supreme Court upheld an executive's conviction for bribing a prime minister.
By the time the final verdict was reached, many of the defendants and key witnesses in the scandal had died, including former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, who was accused of taking the bribe. He died in 1993 with his final appeal still pending.The case became symbolic of "money politics" in Japan, where scandals involving illicit links between businessmen and politicians have tainted politics since the end of World War II.
Tanaka was convicted in lower courts of taking money indirectly from the U.S.-based Lockheed Corp. in 1972 in exchange for influencing All Nippon Airways to buy Lockheed planes.
While many Cabinet ministers have been implicated in similar scandals, Tanaka remains the only postwar prime minister to have been convicted of taking bribes. He was sentenced to four years in prison but never served time.
In Wednesday's ruling, the high court upheld a 21/2-year prison sentence given by lower courts to former Marubeni Corp. chairman Hiro Hiyama, 85. Marubeni, a major Japanese trading company, was acting as Lockheed's agent in Japan when the case arose.
Former Tanaka secretary Toshio Enomoto, 68, also received a one-year suspended sentence for helping arrange the bribe.
Hiyama has not served any time yet and may be able to avoid prison if he can convince authorities that his health would be endangered.
Altogether, 11 people were found guilty in the Lockheed scandal, and another five died before a final verdict.
The Lockheed case was uncovered in 1976 after a Lockheed executive testified in the U.S. Congress that the company had spent underground money to sell its aircraft abroad.
Some analysts speculated that the Supreme Court purposely delayed its ruling to ensure that it wouldn't have much impact.
"You sort of get the impression that the Supreme Court was waiting for the defendant to die," said Takashi Tachibana, an author and longtime critic of Tanaka.