Photo/Illutration Investigators search the Tokyo home of Hidetoshi Tanaka, chairman of Nihon University's board, on Oct. 7. (Hikaru Yokoyama)

Tokyo prosecutors on Oct. 13 questioned Hidetoshi Tanaka, chairman of Nihon University’s board of directors, on a voluntary basis for the first time since a close aide was arrested in a money scandal.

The Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office suspects Tanaka, 74, may have been involved in the series of dubious money transfers stemming from a contract to reconstruct the university’s hospital, sources said.

Investigators are believed to have asked the chairman if he received any of the 220 million yen ($1.9 million) that had been moved around.

The office’s special investigative team on Oct. 7 arrested university board member Tadao Inoguchi, 64, and Masami Yabumoto, 61, former chief of Osaka-based Kinshukai, a major medical corporation group, on suspicion of breach of trust.

The title printed on Inoguchi’s business card is: “Adviser attached to the board chairman.”

Prosecutors that same day searched Tanaka’s home for a second time.

After the first search on Sept. 8, Tanaka twice agreed to be interviewed by prosecutors.

He is now in a hospital for what he says is a worsening underlying illness.

According to sources, Tanaka told people around him that he “did not know” about the money transfers, and he denied receiving payments from the two suspects.

He also reportedly said, “I do not think (the scandal) caused any financial damage to Nihon University.”

According to prosecutors and other sources, the scandal stemmed from Nihon University’s plans to rebuild Nihon University Itabashi Hospital in Tokyo’s Itabashi Ward.

The university subcontracted a subsidiary, Nihon University Enterprise Co., to select a company to manage the reconstruction project.

Inoguchi, a board director of the subsidiary based in Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward, chose a design office in the capital for the work by altering the evaluation scores of the bidders, sources said.

The university paid about 730 million yen as an initial fee to the design office.

In August 2020, Inoguchi ordered the design office to transfer about 220 million yen of the payment to a dummy company set up by Yabumoto, sources said.

In September 2020, a Kinshukai-related company transferred 66 million yen to a company connected to an acquaintance of Inoguchi.

In the end, Inoguchi received a total of 25 million yen, the sources said.

Yabumoto received a 100-million-yen dividend payment as a stockholder of the dummy company, they said.

The two suspects have denied the allegations.

Prosecutors are asking them if they provided payments to Tanaka, the sources said.

Tanaka was the chief of the university’s health and physical education secretariat before becoming chairman of the board of directors in 2008.

Yabumoto and Tanaka both served as vice chairman of the Japan Sumo Federation, which supervises amateur sumo wrestling.

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