Ministry to investigate alleged Moritomo document changes

March 3, 2018

Tokyo- Japan's Finance Ministry said Friday that it will investigate allegations that it had rewritten its documents about a controversial discount sale of state land to private school operator Moritomo Gakuen.

"We'll look into the allegations, eliminating any effect on investigations" by public prosecutors, Mitsuru Ota, director-general of the ministry's Financial Bureau, told a meeting of the House of Councillors Budget Committee.

The ministry will report back on the matter by Tuesday, Ota said at a meeting of the House of Representatives Financial Committee.

Finance Minister Taro Aso declined to comment on the matter at the Upper House meeting, citing the investigations into the land sale by the Osaka District Public Prosecutors Office.

How his comments about the allegations will affect the prosecutors' investigations is uncertain, Aso said.

But he later told the Lower House meeting that if the allegations are true, this is "a matter of grave concern."

A Japanese newspaper report said Friday that documents prepared by the ministry in 2015 and 2016 about the land sale and documents disclosed to lawmakers later have differences in contents, raising the possibility that the original ones had been rewritten.

Opposition lawmakers urged the ministry to submit the original documents. But the ministry rejected the demand, saying the matter is under investigation.

"If the allegations are true, the cabinet (of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe) must resign," Kenta Izumi, parliamentary affairs chief of the opposition Party of Hope, told reporters.

"Doctoring documents is a crime and it is a matter that will hold the entire cabinet responsible," said Akira Koike, head of the secretariat at the Japanese Communist Party.

The government has been under fire for its alleged favoritism toward Moritomo Gakuen over the discount sale of a land plot in Toyonaka, Osaka Prefecture, western Japan, to the school operator, based in the city of Osaka. Jiji Press