Yuji Naka Has Been Arrested For Insider Trading Involving Dragon Quest

It’s been announced by the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors’ Office that Sonic co-creator and Balan Wonderworld director Yuji Naka, age 57, has been arrested on suspicion of insider trading involving a project in the Dragon Quest franchise.

According to the report, while Naka was an employee at Square Enix he became privy to important information regarding the new Dragon Quest Mobile game Dragon Quest Tact.

Before the information about the game was made public, the suspect allegedly bought 10,000 shares of Aiming stock for approximately 2.8 million yen. Yuji Naka was arrested for insider trading under the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act.

He is not the only former Square Enix employee to be charged with these crimes. According to Nippon, Taisuke Sazaki, 38, who previously worked on various Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts games was arrested for allegedly acquiring shares worth 20.8 million yen. A friend of Sazaki, Fumiaki Suzuki, 40, bought 26.4 million yen worth of shares and has also been arrested.

As of this article, we do not know if Naka or the other men arrested still have ownership of these shares.

Yuji Naka is well known as one of the co-creators of Sonic The Hedgehog. He is also known for his work on classic Sega-published titles like Nights: Into Dreams and the Phantasy Star series. His latest game, however, Balan Wonderworld, published by Square Enix, was critically derided for its poor gameplay and level design.

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