Kansai Electric: 75 executives took ¥360 million in gifts from a town fixer

Kansai Electric ran the Takahama nuclear plant in a town whose deputy mayor, Moriyama Eiji, spent decades as its unofficial gatekeeper — smothering opposition to the reactors and helping bury problems. After he left office in 1987, the company kept steering construction work, much of it without competitive bidding, to firms close to him. In return, Moriyama and firms linked to him handed cash, gold coins and suit-tailoring coupons to Kansai Electric people: a third-party committee later counted 75 recipients, about ¥360 million over more than 30 years.

A 2018 national tax audit exposed part of the flow. The company quietly returned about ¥160 million in valuables and ran an internal investigation led by a former prosecutor — which never interviewed Moriyama and reported nothing to the board. On September 26, 2019 Kyodo News published the story, and the trade minister called it 'utterly outrageous.'

Kansai Electric then hired a third-party committee chaired by a former Prosecutor General. Its March 14, 2020 report confirmed the favoritism and uncovered a second scheme: about ¥260 million paid to senior directors as post-retirement 'adviser fees' was a secret refund of the pay cuts those directors had accepted as a condition of raising electricity rates after Fukushima. The company's three most recent leaders all resigned.

The company sued five (later six) former directors for ¥1.94 billion; Osaka prosecutors declined criminal charges in November 2021 for lack of evidence, and tax authorities ruled the back-pay arrangement hidden income, levying heavy additional tax. Shareholders filed their own ¥9.4 billion derivative suit.

¥360 million in gifts; three top leaders resigned; ¥1.94 billion corporate claim, ¥9.4 billion shareholder suit, plus back taxes on hidden income

A regional monopoly treated one man's goodwill as critical infrastructure, so paying him became 'etiquette' — a custom nobody ever reviewed as a decision.

No-bid contracts gave the relationship a payment channel with no competitive benchmark, no paper trail and no counterparty scrutiny.

The first internal investigation was run by one side for one side: it never interviewed Moriyama and never told the board, so the company's formal governance loop never closed.

The executives who should have policed the relationship were its beneficiaries — 75 of them were on the take, which is why it survived four presidents.

If someone outside the org chart is essential to the business, paper controls stop working. Boards should audit who the company actually pays — contracts as well as salaries.

Kansai Electric reformed its board and sued its former leadership; the civil trial against six ex-executives ended hearings in September 2026, with judgment due March 3, 2027. Shareholders' ¥9.4 billion claim awaits the same ruling. Prosecutors never charged anyone. Moriyama has died; the panel's final accounting raised the totals to 83 recipients and about ¥370 million.