Photo/Illutration The carcass of a stray whale is hoisted aboard a barge at a pier in Osaka’s Konohana Ward on Jan. 18. (Satoru Ogawa)

OSAKA--A civic group took legal action for the return of 80.19 million yen ($510,000) spent by the municipal government here on burying a stranded whale, saying the cost was more than double the city’s initial estimate.

The animal died in Osaka Bay in January.

Local ombudsman group “Mihariban” filed the lawsuit against Osaka Mayor Hideyuki Yokoyama at the Osaka District Court on May 23.

It said the mayor has a responsibility to get the offshore burial contractor and the municipal officials who negotiated the deal to repay the money.

The animal, believed to be a sperm whale, measured about 15 meters long and weighed 38 tons.

It perished Jan. 13 in Osaka Bay near the mouth of the Yodogawa river.

The carcass, nicknamed Yodo-chan after the river, was buried at sea six days later in an area of the Kii Channel. The site was about 130 kilometers from the coast.

The contractor initially proposed a bill of 86.25 million yen. However, the city later came up with a much lower figure of 37.74 million yen.

Despite the discrepancy, a deal was eventually reached for payment of 80.19 million yen in late March, just before the fiscal year ended.

The contractor, a local company, was chosen without the usual bidding process. The price was negotiated after the burial due to the urgent need to prevent decomposition of the carcass.

The ombudsman group argues that the contract was illegal and invalid.

It alleges that an official from the city’s ports and harbor office interfered in the contract negotiation by sending emails to colleagues, exerting pressure on them to inflate the city’s estimate so it basically matched the contractor’s original quotation.

The official told colleagues that a justification for the inflated estimate could be created later, according to the group.

It also turned out that the official dined with a representative of the contractor during the negotiation period.

The city’s internal rules on bidding and contracting prohibit such meetings due to potential conflicts of interest.

In April, following a request from citizens, the city’s audit committee urged the mayor to investigate the matter.

The committee raised strong suspicions that the city “negotiated with the contractor with a predetermined target price.”

In response, the mayor said he would set up an external investigation team.

(This article was compiled from reports by Tetsuaki Otaki and Tatsuya Harada.)

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