Bribe from a manufacturer in the name of “donation”…What is the future “repercussions” of the case of an elite associate professor at the University of Tokyo?

An elite doctor at the University of Tokyo Hospital who was arrested

At 8:30 in the morning of November 21, a man was sent away in a convoy from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s Chuo Police Station. Seated in the center of the back seat, which was covered with wire mesh and acrylic panels, the slender-looking man appeared to be staring at a point in front of him and mumbling something.

The suspect, Takehiro Matsubara, 53, a doctor at the University of Tokyo Hospital, was arrested on November 19 by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s Investigation Division 2 on suspicion of bribery. The suspect, Takehiro Matsubara, 53, is suspected of receiving approximately 700,000 yen in the form of a “donation” in return for preferential use of products from medical equipment manufacturer MDM Japan (hereinafter referred to as “MDM”). 41-year-old Takayuki Suzuki, former Tokyo Sales Manager II of MDM, was also arrested on suspicion of bribery.

The medical equipment used at the University of Tokyo Hospital is registered, and Matsubara had the authority to decide which equipment to apply for registration with the hospital’s internal committee. The suspect was arrested in September ’21 and January ’23. In September 2009 and January 2011, in return for favors for the use of femoral implants handled by MDM, the suspect made the company donate a total of 800,000 yen in cash as a “scholarship donation” and received a total of approximately 700,000 yen of the donation as a bribe.

With the money he received, Matsubara purchased computers, tablets, wireless earphones, and other items, which he gave to his relatives. In addition, he and another doctor received entertainment from MDM for a total of approximately 220,000 yen twice at a yakiniku (grilled meat) restaurant.

Matsubara is an associate professor at the University of Tokyo School of Medicine and belongs to the Department of Emergency and Intensive Care Medicine at the hospital. He was also in charge of surgery on patients with bone fractures as “chief of trauma diagnosis” in the orthopedic and spine surgery department. In October of last year, he was part of the team that operated on Empress Michiko, who fell and fractured her upper right femur in her palace.

The incident was triggered by a bribery case in which an MDM employee was arrested and indicted for giving cash to two doctors at a municipal hospital in Saku City, Nagano Prefecture, in June and July. The name of the suspect, Matsubara, came up in the course of that investigation.

Company Moves to Abolish Donations

Section 2 turned its attention to the “scholarship donation” that MDM had been transferring to the University of Tokyo. This is money donated for the purpose of academic emergence or research grants, and a document stating the specific recipient of the donation is submitted to the university. In the case of Todai, 85% of the donation, excluding the share of the university and hospital, is allocated to individual designated doctors to be used for research purposes. It appears that Matsubara instructed Suzuki and the other suspects on how to write the documents to be submitted to this university.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department took notice of the fact that a portion of the scholarship donation was used to purchase goods unrelated to research, and it is believed that MDM decided to file the case on the grounds that the donation was made with the intention of having its products used by MDM as well.

It is believed that Matsubara received approximately 3 million yen out of the 3.5 million yen in scholarship donations transferred 10 times between 2004 and 2011 from a total of five companies including MDM.

Scholarship donations from companies to universities are different from contracted research, for which contracts are signed between the company and the university and the use of the donated funds is strictly regulated. There have been cases in the past where this was regarded as a “bribe. A journalist familiar with the medical situation pointed out the following.

In 2009, a professor at Mie University Hospital was arrested and prosecuted for forcing a pharmaceutical company employee to transfer 2 million yen in scholarship donations to the university’s account in return for an increase in the amount of drugs used. In this case, even the scholarship donation was regarded as a bribe, which caused a great shock to those in the industry. Since then, pharmaceutical companies have been abolishing scholarship endowments one after another. However, the medical device industry has lagged behind in this trend, which some industry insiders point out led to the current incident. We expect that more manufacturers will abolish scholarship endowments in the future.

On the other hand, the amount of operating subsidies provided to national universities by the government is on a downward trend, and the percentage of research expenses that universities must cover from outside sources is increasing every year. If scholarship donations are eliminated, some national universities will face an even more difficult situation in terms of fundraising.

The majority of serious researchers will suffer because of the greed of a few.

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