TOKYO, July 21 (Xinhua) -- The Tokyo High Court, in Japan's first plea bargaining deal, ordered a former executive of Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems Ltd. to pay a fine rather than serve a suspended sentence previously handed down by a district court.
The Tokyo High Court ordered Satoshi Uchida, 66, a former executive of Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems Ltd., to pay a 2.5-million-yen (23,000 U.S. dollars) fine over bribery.
The plea bargaining deal signed between prosecutors and Mitsubishi Hitachi Power exempted Uchida from the indictment in exchange for cooperation during the investigation and trial, sources with knowledge of the matter said.
The high court nullified the Tokyo District Court's ruling last September which sentenced Uchida to 18 months in prison for conspiring with two others to bribe a senior Thai official in a power plant project in Thailand.
The Tokyo High Court ruled that depositions given by two of Uchida's subordinates claiming that he approved the bribe were dubious.
According to Presiding Judge Yoshifumi Asayama, "Uchida was consistently hesitant and urging them to come up with alternatives. The district court ruling which admitted his conspiracy leaves a reasonable doubt."
Tuesday ruling did find, however, that Uchida failed to stop the pair from bribing an official of the Ministry of Transport in Thailand, although he could have.
The two, earlier convicted of bribing the official, paid 347,000 U.S. dollars to the Thai official in February 2015 after being told that the company had not meet requisite conditions for unloading cargo.
Such deals were introduced in Japan in June 2018 and have since been used in charging ex-Nissan Motor Co. Chairman Carlos Ghosn with alleged financial misconduct, after a deal was struck between prosecutors and two of Ghosn's former close aides. Enditem
