Lower House Panel Votes to Summon Ex-MOF Official on Tuesday

March 23, 2018

Tokyo- The House of Representatives Budget Committee on Thursday voted to summon former Ministry of Finance official Nobuhisa Sagawa for sworn testimony Tuesday afternoon.

Sagawa, a key figure in a document falsification scandal linked to a controversial state land sale to Moritomo Gakuen, will appear before the Lower House panel for two hours and 10 minutes from 2 p.m. (5 a.m. GMT).

He is also set to present himself before the House of Councillors Budget Committee as a sworn witness for two hours from9:30 a.m. also on Tuesday, in line with the committee's decision on the matter earlier this week.

Sagawa was head of the ministry's Financial Bureau when the bureau altered last year documents related to the state land in Osaka Prefecture that had been sold with a huge discount to the nationalist school operator in 2016. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's wife, Akie, was once named honorary principal of a school that Moritomo Gakuen planned to build on the land.

The focus of the upcoming parliamentary testimony will be who instructed that the documents be falsified and for what reasons, as well as whether there was any political involvement in the land deal, such as by the prime minister's office.

Opposition parties are also poised to request parliamentary testimony by Takaya Imai, Abe's secretary for political affairs. He once worked as the boss of Saeko Tani, who assisted Akie Abe as a government official around the time of the land deal.

"It's unnatural to assume that Imai knew nothing about the deal," Democratic Party President Kohei Otsuka told a press conference.

Otsuka indicated the possibility that the party may also demand testimony by MOF International Bureau Director-General Yoshiki Takeuchi, who was head of the ministry's Kinki Local Finance Bureau when the bureau was holding negotiations on the land with Moritomo Gakuen. Jiji Press