Senior officials in the Osaka District Public Prosecutor's Office were aware that a prosecutor arrested Tuesday had tampered with data seized last year in relation to a postal abuse case, sources at the office said Wednesday, hinting at an organizational coverup.
Tsunehiko Maeda, 43, the principal prosecutor in the case against welfare official Atsuko Muraki, divulged that he altered the data, and the information was passed on to the office's top officials, the sources said. Muraki, 54, was acquitted on Sept. 10.
An investigative team from the Supreme Public Prosecutor's Office is poised to look into the possibility the district office was involved in knowingly leaving the falsified data without investigating the prosecutor's alleged impropriety, they said.