Airline president arrested

Press, 9 July 1976, Page 4

Airline president arrested

NZPA Tokyo Prosecutors have arrested the president of All Nippon Airways, the fifth executive of Japan's largest domestic airlines to be held in the sl2m Lockheed Aircraft Corporation pay-off scandal. Tokuji Wakasa has been charged with giving false testimony before Parliament and violating Japan’s foreignexchange control laws by taking a $166,000 bribe from A. A. Elliott, a former employee in Lockheed’s Tokyo office, in 1974, reports United Press International. Wakasa, aged 61. has been president of A.N.A. since 1970,. when, according to tes. timony before Parliament, he reversed a decision to buy McDonnel Douglas DClOs in favour of Lockheed's Tristar jet. He was the fifth executive of the nation’s biggest domestic airlines arrested in the scandal has dominated

i Japanese politics since Feb-1 ruary, when Lockheed offiI cials told a United States i Senate committee that theyj ; doled out sl2m in bribes and! : illegal commissions to pro- ■ mote aircraft sales in Japan, I Koichi Fujiwara, an A.N.A. | director and Wakasa’s right-i hand man, was also arrested yesterday on charges of secretly receiving $366,000. from Lockheed in April 1975. | Three other A.N.A. officials (were arrested last month in J the pay-off scandal. Two executives at Maru-; beni, Lockheed’s agent in, ■Japan, and two aides to i Yoshia Kodarna, the Right-; (wing lobbyist who was Lock-! heed’s secret go-between ini Japan, also have been! jcharged in the case. ■ Kodarna. who allegedly re-' Reived as much as S7m from Lockheed, has been indicted j for tax evasions and other > charges, but was not arrested because,of illness, i: £