Prosecutors in Tokyo have arrested four people for allegedly evading taxes worth over 2 million dollars on their cryptocurrency gains.
The suspects include Tahara Junichi, an executive at a construction company based in southwestern Japan's Kagoshima Prefecture, and the representative of Dubai-based company KPT General Trading, Tawada Shinichi.
The prosecutors suspect that the four people hid profits made through cryptocurrency transactions and evaded taxes worth more than 300 million yen, or about 2.2 million dollars.
On Wednesday, the prosecutors and officials from the Tokyo Regional Taxation Bureau began jointly searching the company Tahara belongs to and other places.
Sources say Tawada is suspected of instructing Tahara to report most of his cryptocurrency profits as loans provided by the Dubai company in a bid to make the profits look smaller.
This is the fourth time for Tawada to be served an arrest warrant. He was already indicted three times last year alone for suspected involvement in other instances of tax evasion.
The prosecutors have not disclosed whether the four suspects have admitted to the allegations.