TOKYO, Sept. 4 — Takafumi Horie, the brash, 33-year-old Internet entrepreneur whose rise and fall has captivated Japan the last two years, pleaded not guilty to charges of violating securities law at the opening of his trial here on Monday.
Mr. Horie’s appearance in the Tokyo District Court attracted the same kind of intense interest that the O. J. Simpson trial drew in the United States.
About 2,000 people lined up outside the court, many showing up in the predawn hours, in the hope of getting one of the 61 courtroom seats made available to the public.
Those who claimed the seats saw Mr. Horie — known for flouting Japan’s conservative business practices by wearing T-shirts in public — stand up in court, dressed in a black suit, white shirt and blue tie, and strongly proclaim his innocence.
“I have not carried out, or instructed, such crimes as were mentioned,” he said. “The indictment was written with malice.”
“It’s regrettable that I’ve been indicted,” he added.
Corporate trials are relatively rare occurrences in Japan. But because Mr. Horie has already been condemned by some in the court of public opinion — his character brought into question during endless leaks of information from the authorities — the trial that began on Monday has the tinge of a celebrity circus.
Prosecutors have charged Mr. Horie and his colleagues with manipulating the financial figures of his company, Livedoor, in 2004, to conceal losses and inflate the company’s stock price. In addition, the prosecutors said that the company’s executives set up “dummy” corporations and spread false information about a Livedoor subsidiary’s takeover of another company.
