Aso Plays Down Moritomo Document Tampering

May 29, 2018

Tokyo- Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso on Tuesday played down his ministry's document falsification linked to a controversial state land sale.

"As far as I can see in the rewritten papers, what was done may not be as malicious as turning white into black or what we call 'falsification,'" Aso told a House of Representatives committee meeting.

At the same time, Aso said that the rewriting was an extremely serious problem and that he must deeply apologize for it.

Former Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, who has also served as finance minister, demanded Aso's resignation by saying, "You can't get this problem over with only by punishing related bureaucrats."

Aso said, "I'll keep your remark in mind as an opinion from a former finance minister."

The Finance Ministry has admitted falsifying documents related to the June 2016 sale of the plot of state land to school operator Moritomo Gakuen, once linked to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's wife, Akie, at a discount of some 800 million yen from its assessed value. The discount was intended to offset the costs of removing underground waste from the site.

In the tampering, the ministry eliminated or changed descriptions about the process of negotiations with Moritomo Gakuen and remarks containing the name of the prime minister's wife.

The bureau has been found to have asked the transport ministry's West Japan Civil Aviation Bureau, which owned the land, to expand the scope of waste removal in calculating the necessary costs. As a result, the costs increased by 150 million yen from the initial estimate.

Aso offered a view that this was part of legitimate procedures taken for the land sale.

"The finance bureau made the request apparently in order to do things right in advance based on an assumption of receiving complaints," Aso told a press conference held before the committee meeting.

Meeting the press separately on Tuesday, transport minister Keiichi Ishii acknowledged that Kuniharu Ebina, director-general of the Civil Aviation Bureau at the transport ministry, met with Mitsuru Ota, director-general of the Financial Bureau at the Finance Ministry, in September last year to exchange opinions about the issue of the discount land sale.

The acknowledgement came after the Japanese Communist Party said Monday it has obtained a record on the September 2017 meeting between Ebina and Ota that included a remark by Ota that documents related to the land sale should be disclosed to parliament by taking into account the possibility of creating disadvantages in connection with Abe's administration.

According to Ishii, Ebina said he cannot clearly remember the remark by Ota. The transport ministry will investigate whether there are documents or memos about the meeting, Ishii said. Jiji Press