MOF official admits asking Moritomo to lie about murky land deal

April 9, 2018

Tokyo- Mitsuru Ota, director-general of the Ministry of Finance's Financial Bureau, admitted Monday that a bureau official asked Moritomo Gakuen last year to lie about the huge discount sale of a state land lot to the school operator.

"Seeking explanations that run counter to the truth was definitely the wrong response to make," Ota told a House of Councillors committee meeting, giving an apology.

Ota's remarks came after public broadcaster Japan Broadcasting Corp., or NHK, on Wednesday reported about the bureau's attempt to ensure the school operator tells the same story as the bureau. Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Taro Aso promised to check the facts.

In June 2016, Moritomo Gakuen acquired the 8,770-square-meter land in Toyonaka in the western prefecture of Osaka from the central government for 134 million yen, down from the assessed value of 956 million yen. Costs for disposing of waste buried there were cited to justify the huge discount.

According to Ota, the Financial Bureau official made the request on Feb. 20, 2017, to lie about the deal.

The MOF's explanations to parliament around that time were that the waste had been appropriately removed by the buyer of the land.

Hoping to make Moritomo's explanations on the matter consistent with those of the MOF, the bureau official proposed to the lawyer of the school operator over the phone that Moritomo claim thousands of trucks were used to remove the waste, according to Ota.

The bureau official also asked the ministry's Kinki Local Finance Bureau in western Japan, which was in charge of negotiations with Moritomo Gakuen on the property deal, to get the school operator to give such explanations about the waste.

But the local bureau refused, saying such explanations would run counter to the facts, and Moritomo Gakuen also did not meet the request, according to Ota.

Also in the Upper House committee meeting, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe apologized for the long-undisclosed discovery of daily activity logs between 2004 and 2006 from the Ground Self-Defense Force's mission in Iraq. The ministry initially claimed the logs were "nonexistent."

"As SDF commander in chief and head of the government, I'd like to apologize deeply to the public," Abe said. "It's a serious problem that may affect civilian control and is extremely regrettable."

Abe pledged to make the utmost effort to restore public confidence. Jiji Press