The mayor of Yamanashi was arrested Monday for allegedly falsifying the results of a municipal recruitment test last year to help an applicant land a job, the police said.
Seiki Mochizuki, 70, is serving his first term as mayor of the mountainous city, which is just outside Kofu, the capital of Yamanashi Prefecture. He is suspected of allegedly altering an official document to inflate the applicant's score on the written part of the hiring examination.
According to the Yamanashi Municipal Government, the exam is a two-stage process consisting of a written test, plus an interview and essay. A total of 17 people passed the test to land jobs at City Hall in April.
Mochizuki allowed senior officials including himself to observe the second stage of the exam process, reviving a practice that had been abandoned during his predecessor’s tenure.
The former Yamanashi Prefectural Assemblyman, who was elected mayor in February 2014, is also suspected of fraud.
His former wife Harumi, the 61-year-old president of a stone dealer, was indicted in July on a charge of swindling around ¥370 million from a male acquaintance in Saitama Prefecture by asking him to join a bogus investment project. The couple divorced in February.
Mochizuki denied his involvement in the fraud case, but his home has been raided by investigators.
