The Osaka District Public Prosecutor's Office decided again on Friday not to indict former senior Finance Ministry bureaucrat Nobuhisa Sagawa and nine others over the Moritomo Gakuen cronyism scandal that hit the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The secondary decision, which cited insufficient evidence, ...
Suicide of Finance Ministry official linked to Moritomo Gakuen scandal recognized as work-related
The Finance Ministry's Kinki Local Finance Bureau has recognized the 2018 suicide of an official with links to the Moritomo Gakuen scandal as a work-related death, according to government sources. The bureau, based in the city of Osaka, made the decision during the winter of ...
Japan shifts toward digital storage of records after Moritomo, SDF and other scandals
The government plans to shift toward digital management of most public records by the time the new National Archives of Japan building opens in fiscal 2026, aiming to prevent the record management scandals that have plagued the Abe government. Such scandals include the Finance Ministry's ...
Osaka panel urges prosecutors to reopen probe into government's murky Moritomo Gakuen land deal
A judicial body urges prosecutors to reinvestigate a case against a former senior Finance Ministry official who was involved in the Moritomo Gakuen land sale scandal.
Kagoike couple at heart of Japan PM Abe's Moritomo Gakuen cronyism scandal plead not guilty
The former head of a school operator and his wife, who are at the heart of a cronyism scandal linked to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges of fraud related to public subsidies for their schools, claiming their arrests were ...
The Japan Times newsroom selected the following domestic news stories as the most important of 2018.
Year of the Dog fails to answer the tough questions
Sodanē. What an innocent, carefree year it must have been to spawn so bland a word of the year. It has a nice ring to it, especially when spoken with the Hokkaido lilt the women's curling team — surprise bronze medalists — gave it during ...
Yoshitada Konoike, a Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker best known for his role as chair of a Diet panel that debated controversial security bills, has died, sources close to him said Tuesday. He was 78. A House of Councilors member, Konoike presided over debates in the ...
Japan auditors release Moritomo Gakuen report but fail to answer why land was sold so cheap
The national accounting watchdog released a report Thursday on the murky sale of state land in 2016 involving a school operator close to the wife of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, but fell short of identifying why the land was sold at a heavily discounted ...
As Diet wraps up, Abe re-emerges as front-runner for LDP election
As recently as spring, the Abe administration was in disarray, weakened by what appeared to be an unstoppable flow of scandals and missteps.
Inquest sought over decision not to indict Finance Ministry officials over document tampering
A group of citizens filed a petition with a prosecution inquest panel in Osaka on Tuesday to review the decision not to indict former and current Finance Ministry officials involved in the manipulation of official documents related to a controversial sale of state-owned land. "I ...
Finance Ministry officials say Nobuhisa Sagawa ordered falsification of Moritomo papers: sources
Finance Ministry officials have testified that former senior official Nobuhisa Sagawa told them to falsify documents on its controversial sale of state land to school operator Moritomo Gakuen, it has been learned. Sagawa, 60, apparently found problems in Moritomo-related documents with seals affixed to them ...
