Blackmail!

Corporate extortionist? No way. Satoshi Yamamoto prefers to be called a shareholder activist. His small, Tokyo-based publishing company, Rondan Doyukai, invests in Japanese companies and publishes stories on corporate misdeeds in a magazine, newsletter, and even a World Wide Web site (www.iijnet.or.jp/rondan). Insists Yamamoto: "We are professional shareholders."

Yamamoto has not been charged with any offenses and maintains his innocence of wrongdoing. But law enforcement officials and criminal attorneys say that Rondan Doyukai is actually Japan's biggest ring of sokaiya, or mobsters linked to yakuza crime syndicates that specialize in corporate extortion (BW--July 7). By threatening to disclose unsavory information through its magazines or at shareholder meetings, these sources say, Rondan has squeezed payoffs out of some of Japan's biggest companies. "Rondan Doyukai is by far the most powerful sokaiya group," contends Yoshiaki Shinozaki, a prominent criminal attorney who advises companies that have come under pressure from racketeers.