The education ministry has uncovered more than 30 new cases in which it was illegally involved in finding jobs for retired or retiring bureaucrats, including those at the Foreign Ministry, sources said Saturday.
The latest findings in the ministry's amakudari probe bring the total to around 60. The ministry plans to report the cases to the Cabinet Office on Tuesday and announce the results, the sources said.
The law on the re-employment of civil servants was reformed in 2007 to combat the long-standing practice of amakudari (literally meaning descent from heaven), in which retired bureaucrats win plum jobs in sectors they used to oversee. The practice is seen as a potential seed of corruption.