Ichiro Ozawa, former president of the Democratic Party of Japan, entered his final plea of innocence Monday at the Tokyo District Court, claiming no false entries were made in his political funds reports and he never conspired with his former secretaries to make such entries.
The court will rule on his case on April 26. Court-appointed lawyers serving as prosecutors have sought three years' imprisonment for Ozawa for violating the Political Funds Control Law by conspiring with three of his ex-aides to falsify reports issued by his political fund management body Rikuzankai in 2004 and 2005 concerning a ¥400 million land deal in Setagaya Ward, Tokyo.
At the 16th and closing session of his trial, which began last October, Ozawa told the judges that the prosecutors carried out an unfair and illegal investigation, and that he was indicted based on wrongful decisions by the Committee for the Inquest of Prosecution, which was misled by falsified reports submitted by the Tokyo District Public Prosecutor's Office.