Two senior government officials denied Friday making remarks attributed to them that appeared in leaked documents related to the Kake Gakuen scandal, spotlighting stark contradictions between the testimonies of education ministry bureaucrats and officials in Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Cabinet
Koichi Hagiuda, deputy chief Cabinet secretary and a close aide to Abe, told a Diet session Friday that he never urged the Cabinet Office to revise government conditions for allowing a university to open a new veterinary department.
The revised conditions, allegedly proposed by Hagiuda, according to the documents, disqualified Kyoto Sangyo University, a potential rival of Okayama-based school operator Kake Gakuen, from applying for the special deregulation project.