MOF confirms voice data of conversation with Moritomo
November 28, 2017
Tokyo- A senior Japanese Ministry of Finance official on Monday confirmed the existence of voice data of a conversation between a ministry bureau and scandal-tainted school operator Moritomo Gakuen about the controversial sale of a state-owned land plot.
The conversation is believed to have been recorded in May last year, before the land plot in Toyonaka, Osaka Prefecture, western Japan, was sold in June that year to Moritomo Gakuen with a huge discount to construct an elementary school.
Mitsuru Ota, director-general of the ministry's Financial Bureau, admitted the existence of the data at a meeting of the Budget Committee of the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of the Diet, Japan's parliament.
At the meeting, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said his government must take seriously a report released by the Board of Audit of Japan last week. The board said it could not find convincing grounds for giving the discount.
In the recorded conversation, the ministry's Kinki Local Finance Bureau told Yasunori Kagoike, then head of Moritomo Gakuen, that the bureau was making efforts to lower the price of the land plot to nearly zero.
The ministry has confirmed the content of the data with Kinki bureau officials, Ota said at the first budget committee meeting since the current Diet session began on Nov. 1.
The ministry believes that Moritomo Gakuen did not indicate how much it wanted to pay for the land plot before its appraisal value was presented, Ota said.
He added that the ministry also did not submit an asking price to the school operator in advance.
Ota suggested that the conversation was not for prior price negotiations. Jiji Press
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