Photo/Illutration Former Vice President Hideki Toyomatsu, center, along with Chairman Makoto Yagi, left, and Vice President Ikuo Morinaka in 2014 (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

Three executives of Kansai Electric Power Co. received cash and other gifts directly from two engineering works companies, including one tied to a former deputy mayor who showered presents on nuclear-related corporate bigwigs, the utility said.

The revelation could strengthen a possible bribery investigation against Kansai Electric, according to a former prosecutor.

Kansai Electric had initially explained that 20 of its executives received money and goods worth about 320 million yen ($3 million) in total only from Eiji Moriyama, the former deputy mayor of Takahama, Fukui Prefecture, who died in March this year at age 90.

However, suspicions have arisen that part of the money Kansai Electric paid the two companies for engineering work was returned to three of the executives: former Vice President Hideki Toyomatsu, and two executive directors, Shigeki Otsuka and Satoshi Suzuki.

Kansai Electric said one of the companies was Yoshida Kaihatsu, for which Moriyama had served as an adviser. It did not reveal the name of the other company.

Otsuka received 1 million yen in cash and merchandise coupons worth 400,000 yen from the two companies, Kansai Electric said. Toyomatsu received certificates for four tailored suits worth 2 million yen in total, while Suzuki received a certificate for one tailored suit worth 500,000 yen.

Toyomatsu has already used the certificates for the four suits. However, Otsuka and Suzuki returned the gifts to the companies, Kansai Electric said.

According to the Kanazawa Regional Taxation Bureau’s investigations, Yoshida Kaihatsu, based in Takahama, provided dubious funds of about 300 million yen to Moriyama.

In an apparent exchange for the gifts, Kansai Electric executives offered Moriyama information, such as rough amounts of budgets for engineering works projects, before the utility placed its orders.

Many of the executives worked in the utility’s nuclear power business.

Officials at the utility said the executives could not refuse the gifts because they were worried about offending Moriyama, an influential figure in the area.

Masaru Wakasa, a lawyer who was once vice director of the Special Investigation Department of the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office, said the payments from the companies to the executives could create legal problems for the recipients.

“The executives’ receiving of money and goods directly from the companies could be viewed as illegal acts of taking bribes under the Companies Law,” Wakasa said. “It will be easier for prosecutors to indict them (over this) than in a case in which money and goods were offered through a former deputy mayor who is already dead.”