A tax officer and an insurance saleswoman have been arrested on suspicion of embezzling 30 million yen from insurance payouts made to two children whose mother had died.

Arrested Friday were Tadanobu Kondo, 51, of Saitama, an employee of the Shinjuku Tax Office in Tokyo, and Noriko Yoshida, 35, of Itabashi Ward, Tokyo, an insurance saleswoman.

According to the Chiba District Public Prosecutors Office, around April 23, 2004, Kondo and Yoshida instructed the relatives of a teenage brother and sister who received insurance payouts following their mother's death to put the money in Kondo's rental safe on the ground the money should be kept separate from money in the children's bank accounts.

They received some of the payouts, about 50 million yen, from the relatives and allegedly pilfered 30 million yen of it, prosecutors said.

The relatives sought advice from Kondo when he was an employee of the Matsudo Tax Office in Chiba Prefecture, they said.