The Financial Supervisory Agency plans to conduct an investigation into the sales activities of life insurers to forestall a recurrence of a series of insurance-for-murder cases, FSA officials said Wednesday.

The FSA, the nation's financial watchdog, aims to prevent unscrupulous people from taking out multiple policies on another person at different insurance firms with the intention of murdering that person later for the insurance money, the officials said.

The agency wants insurance companies to confirm that a person who has had a multiple number of policies taken out in his or her name by another person really agreed to the policies in the first place, they said.

Earlier in the day, Hitoshi Murai, senior state secretary for financial reconstruction, told the House of Representatives Finance Committee that the FSA plans to have inspectors at the agency's Insurance Supervisory Division examine the propriety of policy-canvassing activities by insurance companies.

The agency will draw up an "inspection manual" obliging these inspectors to look into policy-canvassing operations in greater detail with an eye to preventing murders for insurance.

In addition, the FSA will ask life insurance companies to volunteer to examine the propriety of cases in which multiple policies are taken out on a single person, Murai told the committee.

He also said the agency will urge insurance companies to ensure that doctors examine the physical condition of all people on whom insurance policies are being taken out.

In 1998, Masumi Hayashi, a former insurance saleswoman from Wakayama, was arrested for a series of alleged murder and attempted murder-for-insurance money scams. Hayashi is on trial on those charges, as well as for her alleged involvement in a mass poisoning case the same year.

Following Hayashi's arrest, the FSA urged life insurers to examine cases in which multiple policies had been taken out on individuals.

But similar suspicious insurance-related crimes continued. Last week, Shigeru Yagi, a moneylender in Honjo, Saitama Prefecture, was arrested on suspicion of arranging bogus marriages in alleged murder-for-insurance cases.

Forgery link denied

URAWA, Saitama Pref. (Kyodo) Shigeru Yagi, the key figure in a series of alleged murder-for-insurance scams in Saitama Prefecture, has denied that it is his handwriting on life insurance policies totaling more than 1 billion yen taken out on a former painter, investigative sources said Wednesday.

Police suspect Yagi, 50, Mayumi Take, 32, and other suspects in the case were involved in preparing forged insurance policy documents.

Following a poisoning incident involving the painter, Fujimi Kawamura, 38, and the death of Akira Morita, 61, in May, police seized various insurance documents and other materials during searches conducted on suspicion that the poisoning was attempted murder.

When police checked with Kawamura about his life insurance policies, the painter said the handwriting was not his, the sources said.

Kawamura had been insured for more than 1.01 billion yen under 24 life insurance policies taken out at 16 insurance companies. , police investigations show.

Yagi solicited investment from another suspect, Takako Morita, 38, and others in the form of life insurance premiums, the sources said.

Note believed faked

URAWA, Saitama Pref. (Kyodo) A suicide note left by a man who was found drowned in Saitama Prefecture in 1995 is believed to have been forged, police investigating the case as an alleged murder-for-insurance said Tuesday.

Police are trying to determine whether Shuichi Sato's suicide note to his Filipino wife, Analie Mendoza, 34, now known as Analie Sato Kawamura, was faked, they said.

Sato, 45, was found drowned in the Tone River in June 1995.

At the time, police determined after examining the note that Sato had committed suicide. The widow subsequently received 302 million yen, of which about 280 million yen went to Shigeru Yagi, a 50-year-old moneylender at the center of alleged murder-for-insurance scams.

According to investigative sources, the suicide note indicated that Sato, who was unemployed, was suffering depression due to constant pressure from loan sharks in Tokyo.

The wife, who told police she found the note in her mailbox, asked police on June 5, 1995, to look for her husband. Sato's body was found June 14.

Yagi allegedly had accompanied the wife to the site where Sato's body was found, because she ostensibly did not have a driver's license and could not speak fluent Japanese, the sources said.

Police re-examined the suicide note and discovered that the penmanship did not match Sato's. They decided to look at the note again after allegations the Akira Morita, 61, was murdered and that Fujimi Kawamura, 38, was the target of an attempted murder last May.

Kawamura married Mendoza in July 1998 and his life was insured for more than 1 billion yen, police said.

The cases of Yagi, Kawamura's widow and two others -- Mayumi Take, 32, who worked at one of Yagi's bars, and Takako Morita, 38, Morita's widow -- were sent to prosecutors Sunday on suspicion they supplied false information in the registrations of at least two marriages.

The four have denied the allegations, but police plan to continue interrogating them and serve them with additional warrants for murder and attempted murder.

Last May 29, Akira Morita, whose life was insured for some 170 million yen, died at his apartment from ischemic heart disease. His widow was named as the beneficiary on the insurance contract.

A day later, Kawamura became seriously ill after he had been repeatedly drugged, according to the sources.

Analysis of Kawamura's hair showed an accumulation of acetaminophen. An overdose of the drug, used to treat pain and fever, can lead to death by interfering with the liver's functions.

The analysis showed that Kawamura had been taking the drug since around summer 1998. Investigators suspect Yagi and his accomplices drugged him over a long period of time to obtain insurance benefits.