4 TEPCO Ex-Execs Ordered to Pay 13 T. Yen over 2011 Meltdowns

Tokyo, July 13 (Jiji Press)--Tokyo District Court ordered on Wednesday a former chairman of Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. <9501> and three other former executives to pay the company a total of 13,321 billion yen in compensation on a shareholder derivative lawsuit over the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident.

The amount ordered, equivalent to nearly 100 billion dollars, is believed to be the highest ever in the country. Of the amount, around 1,615 billion yen was awarded as reactor decommissioning costs, 7,083.4 billion yen as compensation for people affected by the accident and 4,622.6 billion yen as decontamination costs.

Presiding Judge Yoshihide Asakura acknowledged negligence on the part of former TEPCO Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata and the three others, saying that the accident could have been prevented by measures against tsunami.

In the lawsuit, TEPCO shareholders demanded a total of 22 trillion yen in damages from five former TEPCO executives for their alleged failure to take measures against tsunami at the company's Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. An unprecedented triple meltdown accident occurred after the plant was struck by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and subsequently triggered huge tsunami.

Of the five, Katsumata, former President Masataka Shimizu, former Executive Vice President Ichiro Takekuro, who headed TEPCO's nuclear power operations at the time, and former Executive Vice President Sakae Muto, who was then working under Takekuro, were ordered to pay compensation. The remaining one, Akio Komori, former managing executive officer, was found to have been not at fault.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]