Takeshi Niinami, one of Japan’s best-known business leaders, has resigned as chief executive of the drinks company Suntory after police raided his home as part of an investigation into suspected illegal supplements.
His resignation from the owner of the Jim Beam whisky brand has sent shockwaves through Japan’s corporate world, with Suntory executives attempting to reassure investors and consumers at a hastily arranged news conference.
The Tokyo Shimbun newspaper said police were investigating Niinami over a suspected violation of Japan’s strict cannabis laws. The executive, who has not commented publicly on the allegations, reportedly offered to resign after returning from an overseas trip on Monday.
Media reports said police had searched his luxury apartment in Tokyo last month, adding that a urine sample had been taken. No illegal substances were found, they said.
The broadcaster Nippon TV, citing unnamed sources, said Niinami was suspected of importing products containing THC, the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, from the US. While CBD products are legal in Japan, they must be free of THC. Possession of cannabis can be punishable by up to seven years in prison.
Niinami, who has denied any wrongdoing, told the company he had bought the supplements in the belief that they were legal, Suntory’s president, Nobuhiro Torii, said on Tuesday.
“The entire company will work together to regain trust,” Torii said. Suntory had concluded that Niinami’s actions “inevitably fall short of the qualities required” of a chief executive, he said, adding that executives felt there was no need to wait until the end of the police investigation before accepting his resignation.
Niinami’s departure will raise questions over the future of his strategy, launched when he became chief executive more than a decade ago, to raise Suntory’s global profile to address slowing consumption at home and counter intense international competition.
As chair of the Japan Association of Corporate Executives, the country’s second-biggest business lobby group, the Harvard-educated executive has used his regular media appearances to criticise traditional business practices. Internationally, he was seen as an antidote to Japan’s risk-averse corporate culture.
He is also a member of prime minister Shigeru Ishiba’s Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy.
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Unusually for a Japanese executive, Niinami has publicly commented on sensitive political and social issues. In July he called on the Bank of Japan to raise interest rates – a move he said would relieve pressure on households struggling with the cost of living crisis.
In 2023, he criticised Japan’s former biggest boyband agency after revelations about decades of sexual abuse by its late founder, Johnny Kitagawa.
Niinami joined Suntory, one of the world’s biggest drinks groups, in 2014 – becoming the first executive outside the founding family – after 12 years as chief executive of the convenience store chain Lawson.
Known for its celebrated single malt whiskies, Suntory has 265 group companies and employs more than 40,000 people worldwide. Its brands include Laphroaig, Orangina and Lucozade. In 2014 it acquired the US maker of Jim Beam for $16bn to become one of the world’s biggest spirits makers.
