A government-affiliated nuclear research agency awarded contracts worth 7.1 billion yen ($87.47 million) to 16 companies that employ retired agency officials, showing that collusive ties remain tight after the Fukushima nuclear accident, an Asahi Shimbun investigation revealed.
A government-affiliated nuclear research agency awarded contracts worth 7.1 billion yen ($87.47 million) to 16 companies that employ retired agency officials, showing that collusive ties remain tight after the Fukushima nuclear accident, an Asahi Shimbun investigation revealed.
The orders were placed--without competitive bidding--by the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) from April to December last year.
At least one contract was related to efforts to decontaminate areas around the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
Arrangements were also made so that companies that won contracts would return part of the money to the JAEA in the form of contributions. This setup enabled the JAEA to raise about 40 million yen over four years, according to the investigation.
Although the JAEA can award contracts to companies without a bidding process, the noncompetitive practice tends to result in more expensive orders being placed.
Government-affiliated entities that use contracts to secure jobs for their retired employees at private-sector companies are engaged in a form of “amakudari,” a practice long criticized as leading to a waste of taxpayer money.
Muneyuki Shindo, a former professor at Chiba University and an expert on administrative affairs, said that requesting donations from contractors also raises doubts about the fairness and appropriateness of the contracts awarded.
“A large number of (JAEA) contracts can be awarded through the bidding process,” Shindo said. “The Board of Audit of Japan should open a probe into the JAEA to find out if placing an order for a project through a negotiated deal is appropriate in the first place and how the contributions were processed.”
The JAEA, based in Tokai village in Ibaraki Prefecture, is mainly involved in research on the safety of nuclear programs. More than 90 percent of its revenues come from government subsidies and grants.
“We need contributions to secure revenues on our own because we are receiving a smaller amount of grants from the government compared with before,” an official at the JAEA’s finance department said. “The contributions are used to help finance research by nuclear scientists.”
The agency said that when it awards contracts, it never takes into consideration if the company makes contributions or employs former JAEA officials.
The finance department official also said the JAEA will stop specifying the size of desired contributions in letters to companies from the current fiscal year to prevent the misunderstanding that making contributions is required to win a project.
The JAEA discloses the names of companies and organizations that have hired former section chiefs or officials in higher positions at the agency and whose deals with the JAEA account for more than two-thirds of their business transactions.
As of October 2011, there were 16 such businesses with 49 former JAEA officials on their payrolls.
The Asahi Shimbun investigated details of the contracts those companies received, as well as their contributions to the JAEA, through documents released under information disclosure requests.
Fifteen of the companies received a total of 60 orders worth 7.13 billion yen through negotiated contracts from the JAEA over the nine-month period, accounting for 20 percent of all negotiated orders the agency placed during that time.
The 16 companies contributed about 40 million yen to the JAEA between April 2008 and November 2011, according to the documents. More than 80 percent of the contributions did not specify how the JAEA should use the funds.
In addition, the agency sent letters requesting contributions to about 1,000 contractors, including the 16 companies, that contained specific figures. The agency has collected at least 300 million yen from 312 companies since fiscal 2008.
One of the 16 companies was E&E Techno Service Ltd., based in Hitachinaka, Ibaraki Prefecture.
E&E Techno Service was awarded a 320-million-yen negotiated contract from the JAEA to measure radiation levels of workers involved in decontamination operations in Fukushima Prefecture.
The deal was part of the 10.1-billion-yen decontamination project the JAEA received from the Cabinet Office in September.
The president and a top official at E&E Techno Service retired from the JAEA.
(This article was written by Satoshi Otani and Yusuke Nikaido.)