Ironically, the charges against Nomura - that it shifted profits from proprietary trades into an account connected to a not-so-influential sokaiya, Ryuichi Koike - came about only because earlier trades Nomura had made on Koike's behalf had gone wrong and lost him money.
Kojin Building, a company owned by Koike's brother, Yoshinori, opened a trading account at Nomura in March 1993. Nomura put it into convertible-bond and warrant-bond trades which made almost ¥300 million that year. (These trades were probably illegal too, but can not be investigated because of a three-year statute of limitations.) But, during 1994, Nomura's trades for Kojin were less successful. By February 1995, the account was showing a loss of ¥300 million. To make up these losses, over the following six months Nomura put together a flurry of illegal deals for Kojin. The biggest single trade was in Fuji Bank stock.
On the morning of March 15 1995, Fuji Bank's share price started to behave oddly. The shares fell 10% in the first hour of trading, but at 10:44am a big buyer put in an order for four million shares at a price of 1780.