After earlier denials, Hokkaido police officially came clean and admitted in early March that one of the force's stations had misappropriated funds meant for rewarding informants.

The revelation came four months after accounting records of the misdeeds were leaked to local media. But was this an isolated case of wrongdoing or evidence of systemic malpractice nationwide?

Hokkaido police admitted, in an interim report on an in-house probe released March 12, that Asahikawa Chuo Police Station officials used money for other purposes in 1995 and 1997 that had been allocated for people who provide information or contribute to investigations. The media had received a photocopy of accounting records and receipts in November that later turned out to have been faked.