Officials not indicted over Moritomo land sale

Jun 01, 2018 | News On Japan

Jun 01, 2018 (NHK) - Japanese prosecutors have decided not to indict a former senior Finance Ministry official on charges of falsifying public documents concerning the controversial sale of state-owned land to a school operator in 2016.

The prosecutors in Osaka said on Thursday that they also decided not to indict other government officials accused of breach of trust for selling the land at a huge discount.

The sale was made to Moritomo Gakuen, which planned to open an elementary school on the land in Osaka Prefecture. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's wife Akie was the school's honorary principal at one time, prompting allegations of favoritism.

The decisions involve 38 government officials.

The prosecutors determined that Nobuhisa Sagawa, who headed the Finance Ministry's section in charge of state-owned land, ordered the falsification of papers concerning the deal.

The ministry says more than 300 words, phrases, or paragraphs in 14 documents were deleted, including the names of Akie Abe and politicians. The ministry admitted that the alterations were made in the spring of 2017 to avoid discrepancies with what Sagawa was then explaining to the Diet.

Source: ANNnewsCH

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