Transport min. gave unaltered Moritomo papers to MOF on March 5

March 14, 2018

Tokyo- Japan's transport ministry on March 5 gave the Ministry of Finance copies of original documents on a state land lot sold at a huge discount to school operator Moritomo Gakuen, informed sources said Tuesday.

This means the Finance Ministry knew of the existence of the unaltered papers on March 5 at the latest. But the ministry disclosed copies of altered documents at the request of lawmakers three days later, on Thursday.

The controversial land deal is linked with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's wife, Akie, who was once appointed honorary principal of an elementary school that the nationalist school operator planned to open on the site in question in Toyonaka, Osaka Prefecture, western Japan.

The major Japanese daily Asahi Shimbun on March 2 ran a report about the document alterations, leading the transport ministry to compare the original documents it holds and the papers that the Finance Ministry had submitted to lawmakers after the land sale problem emerged in February last year, the sources said.

Through the comparison, the transport ministry learned of differences in content between the two sets, which were supposed to be the same, according to the sources at the Civil Aviation Bureau's General Affairs Division.

The documents are about the lease of the land to Moritomo that preceded the discount sale in 2016. The transport ministry was the owner of the land, and it asked the Finance Ministry to dispose of it.

The documents held by the transport ministry do not include an attachment on the history of negotiations with Moritomo but include descriptions saying that the deal would be an "exceptional" one. No such accounts were seen in the papers disclosed by the Finance Ministry.

The land ministry provided the unaltered copies to the Finance Ministry's Financial Bureau on March 5, the sources said.

But the Finance Ministry submitted copies of the altered papers to executives of parliamentary committees on Thursday.

In the face of strong criticism from opposition parties, the ministry admitted altering 14 documents, including those on the land lease and sale, in a report submitted to the same committees Monday. Jiji Press