An Osaka court on Friday dismissed a woman's damages suit claiming that her husband, a former Finance Ministry bureaucrat, killed himself following a former senior ministry official's 2017 order to alter documents related to favoritism allegations against then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
The Osaka District Court determined that as chief of the ministry's Financial Bureau in charge of managing state assets, Nobuhisa Sagawa played a decisive role in falsifying the documents but denied he was personally liable.
The court cited a law stipulating that the state is liable for damages if a civil servant inflicts damage due to illegal actions.