Japan hitmaker Komuro arrested for song fraud-media

TOKYO, Nov 4 (Reuters) - A song-writer and music producer whose string of hits made him a symbol of Japanese pop across Asia in the 1990s has been arrested for a $5 million fraud over rights to his songs, domestic media reported on Tuesday.

Tetsuya Komuro's fall from grace after a career in which media said he sold 170 million CDs hogged headlines in Japan.

News programmes showed Komuro, 49, whose bleached blond mop was once a fixture of television shows and gossip columns, walking out of a hotel in tears. "I want to apologise to the victim and I'm ready to have the grace to face a criminal charge," Komuro was quoted by Kyodo news agency as telling Osaka prosecutors.

Avex Group Holdings, a music company that Komuro has signed a contract with, said in a statement that the producer had been arrested but it did not know the details.

A spokesman for the Osaka District Public Prosecutor said he did not know about the case.

After more than a decade as a keyboard player and composer, Komuro hit the big time as the producer for dance-oriented artists such as Namie Amuro, hitomi and Ryoko Shinohara, dominating the music charts and Japan's karaoke bars for years.

Looking further afield, he also launched a collaboration with French musician Jean-Michel Jarre and the two co-wrote the theme song for the 1998 soccer World Cup.

But the hits dried up and a messy divorce and failed business ventures sent Komuro tumbling into debt, Japanese media said on Tuesday.

Komuro is suspected of agreeing to sell for 1 billion yen ($10 million) the rights to 800 songs he had written, and accepting an advance payment of 500 million yen, even though the rights actually belonged to music publishers, Kyodo news agency said.

A civil court ordered him to pay compensation to the investor but he failed to do so by the agreed day and was arrested after the buyer filed a complaint with prosecutors, it said. ($1=98.81 Yen) (Reporting by Isabel Reynolds and Yoko Kubota; Editing by Michael Watson)