Fair Trade Commission investigators are widening their probe into suspected bid-rigging for projects to redevelop farmland in northeastern Japan devastated by the earthquake and tsunami disaster in 2011.
On April 5, FTC officials searched the offices of the Tohoku Regional Agricultural Administration Office in Sendai, the Miyagi prefectural capital, as well as 13 construction companies believed to have been involved in bid-rigging for projects commissioned by the central government.
The searches came on the heels of ones the previous day that targeted 18 construction companies.
The farm ministry's Tohoku regional office commissioned some large rebuilding projects involving farmland.
Investigators will look into the role played by retired farm ministry bureaucrats who joined the construction companies through the practice known as "amakudari," or descent from heaven, in which bureaucrats land cushy jobs in sectors overseen by their former ministry.
FTC investigators will try to ascertain whether winners of contract bids were predetermined through a coordinated effort among company officials.
As part of the investigation, FTC officials on April 4 searched the office of Hokutokai, an alumni association of sorts for retired farm ministry officials in the Tohoku region. Another target was an association made up of construction companies involved in land improvement work for agricultural purposes in the Tohoku region.
According to sources, the 31 companies searched on April 4 and 5 were all given the highest "A" ranking by the Tohoku regional office based on an appraisal of their past construction work. The ranking allows the companies to participate in projects that have a contract price of at least 200 million yen ($1.8 million).
Those companies are believed to have been involved in farmland rebuilding projects worth 50 billion yen in total.
Total damage to farmland in the Tohoku region as a result of the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami was estimated at 900 billion yen.
The Tohoku Regional Agricultural Administration Office implemented rebuilding projects in 12 locations that had a combined cost of more than 100 billion yen.
One project in eastern Sendai handled by the central government involved removing rubble and desalinating farmland, as well as redrawing farm plots into larger sections for improved efficiency.
That project alone swallowed up 88.4 billion yen in central government funds, making it a target of FTC investigators.
The investigation follows a series of articles published by The Asahi Shimbun in March that uncovered the fact that many of the companies that won contracts for the Sendai project hired retired farm ministry bureaucrats.