EXCLUSIVE: Kabe to Head MOF Financial Bureau

July 25, 2018

Tokyo- The Japanese government plans to promote Tetsuo Kabe, 55, deputy vice minister of finance for policy planning and coordination, to director-general of the Ministry of Finance's Financial Bureau, informed sources have told Jiji Press.

Current Financial Bureau chief Mitsuru Ota, 58, will be appointed director-general of the Budget Bureau.

Takeshi Fujii, 55, deputy commissioner of the National Tax Agency, will be officially promoted to its commissioner, the sources said.

Fujii has been serving as acting head of the tax agency since Nobuhisa Sagawa stepped down from the post in March over the ministry's manipulation of documents related to the controversial huge discount sale of a state land lot to school operator Moritomo Gakuen.

The appointments will take effect after being approved at a cabinet meeting within this month.

The government has already decided to assign Budget Bureau Director-General Shigeaki Okamoto to the post of vice minister of finance, which has been vacant since Junichi Fukuda resigned in April over a sexual harassment scandal.

Kabe, who joined the ministry in 1985, has long served in the Budget Bureau and is believed to a major future candidate for vice minister of finance, the top bureaucrat post at the MOF. He took up his current post in July last year after serving as deputy director-general of the Budget Bureau.

Not being involved in the document tampering scandal, Kabe will face the task of rebuilding the Financial Bureau, the credibility of which has been undermined by the scandal. The bureau is in charge of the management of state assets. Jiji Press