Criminal Complaint Eyed against Ex-MOF Official over Perjury

June 24, 2018

Tokyo- An opposition party plans to call on other parties to work together to file a criminal complaint against a former senior Ministry of Finance official, accusing him of perjury in parliamentary testimony over document manipulation, a lawmaker said Sunday.

There were some remarks by Nobuhisa Sagawa, the former MOF official, that can be regarded as perjury, Tetsuro Fukuyama, secretary-general of the opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, told reporters.

Filing a criminal complaint over alleged perjury requires majority support from lawmakers.

Fukuyama did not clarify what part of Sagawa's testimony may amount to perjury.

In March, Sagawa, former director-general of the ministry's Financial Bureau and former commissioner of the National Tax Agency, appeared in the budget committees of both chambers of parliament to testify as a sworn witness on ministry bureaucrats' doctoring of official documents on a controversial discount sale of state-owned land to Moritomo Gakuen, a school operator once linked to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's wife, Akie.

On a television program earlier on Sunday, Fukuyama called for a further scrutiny in parliament of cronyism scandals involving Moritomo Gakuen and Kake Educational Institution, which is headed by a longtime friend of Abe.

"We need to squeeze out all pus," Fukuyama said.

Akira Koike, head of the secretariat of the Japanese Communist Party, demanded sworn testimony in parliament by Kotaro Kake, head of Kake Educational Institution, and Abe's wife.

Masahiko Shibayama, chief deputy secretary-general of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, only said a proper investigation is needed. Jiji Press