The Diet enacted legislation Friday to disband the scandal-tainted Defense Facilities Administration Agency and streamline the defense bureaucracy.
The House of Councilors approved the related bills at its plenary session with the support of the ruling coalition — the Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito — as well as the opposition leader, the Democratic Party of Japan.
The government plans to scrap the facilities agency effective Sept. 1 and integrate its functions with the Defense Ministry, officials said.
The agency has been mired in a scandal over bid-rigging incidents involving defense facilities-related construction projects that led to the arrest in January 2006 of three of its senior officials. All were indicted and convicted.
The organ was formed in 1962 upon the integration of a department tasked with defense facilities construction at the then Defense Agency, and a government entity for building facilities and procurement for the U.S. forces in Japan.