Japan

A town assembly member who runs a real estate company has received unusually high rent from a subsidiary of Kansai Electric Power Co. (KEPCO), apparently in return for promoting the utility's nuclear power plant in the town, it has been learned. Tomio Yamamoto, 53, a member of the Takahama Town Assembly in Fukui Prefecture and president of OHC Fukui, a real estate company in the town, received over 100 million yen from a subsidiary of KEPCO for renting an unused factory over four years until fiscal 2010. The subsidiary firm used the factory as storage. The town of Takahama is home to KEPCO's Takahama Nuclear Power Plant, which has four nuclear reactors. According to the revelations, senior officials of the Takahama Municipal Government solicited KEPCO to make the property contract with OHC Fukui, in which the rent was set at almost twice the standard in the area, according to realtor sources. In September last year, Yamamoto cooperated with the town assembly's proposal for an opinion statement seeking the reactivation of the nuclear power plant -- setting another example of local assembly members receiving "nuclear money" for promoting nuclear energy projects. The opinion statement was proposed by Akio Awano, 62, vice speaker of the town assembly, and was endorsed by Yamamoto and two other town assembly members before it was submitted to the assembly. The proposal eventually passed the assembly in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March last year. According to the town hall and other insider sources, Yamamoto established a company to produce new material from used tires in 2004, for which he built a factory on the approximately 5,910-square-meter land lot he purchased from the town for 88.65 million yen. However, the project failed and the factory became out of use. Although it has not been clear how much money was paid in rent to the real estate company in fiscal 2007, 50 million yen was paid to the firm annually by the KEPCO subsidiary from fiscal 2008 to 2010, according to the sources. here