KANAGAWA (TR) – Kanagawa Prefectural Police have arrested a senior official with Kawasaki City on suspicion of leaking confidential tender pricing to a contractor lobby group, rigging at least two publicly funded construction bids in the process, reports the Asahi Shimbun (Nov. 4).
Takao Sekiguchi, 59, a senior official in the Urban Development Bureau, faces charges under the Act for Elimination and Prevention of Involvement in Bid Rigging, as well as obstruction of competitive bidding related to public contracts.
Police have not disclosed whether he has admitted to the allegations.
According to police, Sekiguchi allegedly conspired with a male official in his 70s employed by the Kawasaki Painting Industry Association, a registered industry body for paint contractors. The pair are suspected of colluding to deliver confidential pricing data ahead of two open competitive tenders held in 2024, covering painting and waterproofing renovation works at city-owned facilities, in order to steer contracts to association member companies.
Face-to-face inside Kawasaki City Hall
Police allege that Sekiguchi met the association official face-to-face inside Kawasaki City Hall and disclosed the unpublished contract prices. The official then calculated the minimum threshold prices and forwarded the figures by email to a company president who was a member of the association. That president went on to pass the figures to two further firms.
Both companies subsequently won their respective contracts, one for painting renovation works and one for waterproofing renovation works at city facilities, each awarded through an electronic lottery. Police believe the company president had determined in advance which firms would be allowed to win.
Sekiguchi served as head of the Facilities Development Division within the Urban Development Bureau from April 2023 to March 2025, a role that placed him in charge of approving contract prices and drafting operational plans. He held sole sign-off authority over tender prices for projects exceeding 10 million yen. He joined the city government in 1989 and built his career primarily in the construction and architecture sector.
Full extend of the fraud
The association official at the center of the scheme is a former Kawasaki City employee who retired in 2009 at the director-general level and subsequently became secretary-general of the painting industry body.
Police are also investigating the association official and others on suspicion of violating the same anti-bid-rigging statutes, and detectives say they suspect similar corrupt practices may have been repeated across other city-tendered construction projects. Investigators are pressing ahead to establish the full extent of the fraud.
Kawasaki mayor Norihiko Fukuda issued a statement saying, “We will cooperate fully with the police investigation and deal strictly with the matter once the facts have been established.”
City officials described the arrest of a bureau chief-level employee for leaking tender prices to an outsider as something they had “never anticipated, as it goes without saying that it must never happen.”
