NHK is embroiled in a scandal over allegations that the public broadcaster cooked up an interview with a man identified as a broker involved in a fraud, on a popular in-depth news analysis program last May.

"Close-up Gendai," one of NHK's flagship news programs which airs in the evening from Monday through Thursday, introduced in its May 14, 2014, episode a 50-year-old man in Osaka, and described him as a broker involved in the latest shukke sagi fraud technique.

But the recent edition of the weekly magazine Shukan Bunshun reported that the man was in fact asked by an NHK reporter to play the role of the broker.