Ex-Sasebo executives get suspended sentences in fraud trial

TOKYO (AP) - Two former executives of Sasebo Heavy Industries Co. were given suspended prison sentences for defrauding a government work subsidies program of 377 million yen (US$3.2 million), a court official said Wednesday. 

Nagasaki District Court judge Keizo Yamamoto ruled that Sasebo Heavy's former president, Arifumi Himeno, and former deputy director of its Sasebo city shipbuilding yard, Yukio Mizuhiro, received the money from a government fund after falsely claiming that the company had put more than 500 workers through extra training between 1999 and 2001, the court official said on condition of anonymity.