Abe Denies Impact of False Information Spread by Kake Group

May 28, 2018

Tokyo- Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Monday that purportedly false information spread by Kake Educational Institution had no impact on the government approval for the group's launch of a veterinary school in Imabari, Ehime Prefecture.

The private group issued a statement on Saturday claiming that it had "provided false information" to the city and the prefecture by briefing them about a nonexistent meeting between the prime minister and the group's head, Kotaro Kake, a friend of Abe, on Feb. 25, 2015.

The statement denies the allegations made in documents the Ehime prefectural government disclosed early last week that the Abe-Kake meeting took place and that the prime minister gave the thumbs-up to the university veterinary school plan at that time.

The documents contradicted the prime minister's claim that he came to know about the plan to open the veterinary medicine faculty in a national strategic special zone in Imabari, in January 2017, just before the government officially approved it.

"Whether or not I met with the Kake chief had nothing to do with the approval," Abe stressed at a House of Councillors Budget Committee meeting on Monday.

Abe said he did not receive from the group prior notice of the release of its latest statement. "There's no reason to make a protest" over what is written in the statement, he added.

The prime minister reiterated his position that he has never discussed with the group head the launch of the university faculty of veterinary science.

Opposition parties are suspicious about the group's motives behind the release of the statement.

"They have started to make excuses that are impossible from the viewpoint of common sense," Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan chief Yukio Edano said Saturday.

"The statement, if true, would mean that the group cheated the prefecture and the city by using the prime minister's name," Edano argued. "It would be a criminal act."

"No matter whether the group lied (in the statement) to protect the prime minister or told the local governments a fabricated story, this is a big problem," CDPJ Diet affairs chief Kiyomi Tsujimoto said Sunday. Jiji Press