Photo/Illutration Tsukasa Akimoto serves as chair of the Cabinet committee at the Lower House when legislation to lift the ban on casinos was debated in December 2016. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

Tokyo prosecutors on Jan. 14 rearrested Lower House member Tsukasa Akimoto on suspicion of taking bribes from a Chinese company that planned to operate a casino in Japan.

Akimoto is accused of accepting 2 million yen ($18,180) in bribes from the company, 500.com, when he gave a lecture at a symposium on casino projects in Naha, Okinawa Prefecture, on Aug. 4, 2017. The company had organized the symposium and the top executive of 500.com also gave a lecture there.

The company originally planned to pay Akimoto 500,000 yen for his lecture. But the sum was raised to 2 million yen after the company learned that Akimoto had been tapped to become vice minister in the Cabinet Office and would oversee casino-related projects, investigative sources said.

Akimoto left the ruling Liberal Democratic Party after his initial arrest in the bribery scandal on Dec. 25.

He is also suspected of receiving 1.5 million yen in bribes from the same company in the form of expenses for his visit to 500.com's headquarters in Shenzhen in the Chinese province of Guandong in December 2017. Akimoto met with top executives of the company and inspected a casino in Macao.

Akimoto denies accepting money at the symposium and said his aides paid for his trip to China.