Society

Heads of 3 Japan Post group firms to step down

Dec 26 (NHK) - The heads of three Japan Post group firms are set to resign amid a scandal involving dubious sales of insurance policies.

Sources say Japan Post Holdings President Masatsugu Nagato, Japan Post President Kunio Yokoyama, and Japan Post Insurance President Mitsuhiko Uehira will step down to take responsibility. The whole group employs about 420,000 workers.

The group said last Wednesday that an internal investigation identified more than 12,000 cases of policy sales that are suspected of having broken the law or company rules, with 670 of them already confirmed of actually being in violation.

The Financial Services Agency is expected on Friday to order Japan Post Insurance and Japan Post, which sells the policies, to partially suspend their business operations.

The internal affairs ministry is also planning to take administrative disciplinary action against the two firms.

Japan Post Holdings president Nagato told a news conference last Wednesday that he would announce management's responsibility at an appropriate time.

Observers say the executives apparently decided that their resignations would be unavoidable as authorities are poised to demand that management's responsibility be clarified.

The announcement is expected to be made on Friday.

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