Who is Noriko Motokado? What is DIO Japan?

Noriko Motokado (本門のり子) is the president of DIO Japan, Inc. Her maiden name is Noriko Kojima (小島のり子). She used to be a ping-pong player.

DIO Japan had been operating call centers all over Japan since 2008, but it stopped the business on August 8th, 2014. Finally, it applied to Tokyo District Court for bankruptcy protection from its creditors under the Civil Rehabilitation Law on November 12th, 2014.

In 2012, DIO Japan used a government subsidy to open new call centers in Fukushima, Iwate and Miyagi. The purpose of the subsidy is to create jobs in Tohoku region which was damaged by the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11th, 2011. The subsidy amounted to a total of 4.2 billion yen.

However, since the beginning of 2014, DIO Japan has closed the call centers and fired the employees. According to the report of NHK, one of the call centers didn't even acquire devices to start its business as a call center. Therefore, some people say that DIO Japan defrauded the subsidy.

Some people says that the process of the bid for the subsidy was opaque in the first place, because DIO Japan was less experienced in business of call center compared to its competitor firms. One of the competitors says that Noriko Motokado might have made an backstage deal with politicians or government officials.

This is the news report about DIO Japan. The picture of Noriko Motokado appears at 0:53.