Although there were murky aspects, prosecutors concluded there is no evidence to hold anyone criminally responsible. The Finance Ministry must seriously accept the fact that it damaged public trust in the government.
The Osaka District Public Prosecutors Office's special investigation squad has decided not to indict ministry officials involved in the sale of state-owned land to school operator Moritomo Gakuen.
Citizen groups and others had filed criminal complaints against ministry officials including former National Tax Agency chief Nobuhisa Sagawa. The special investigation squad decided there were "insufficient grounds for charging" or "no grounds for charging" these officials.
"Insufficient grounds" means there is not enough evidence to prove a crime took place. According to the principles of criminal justice, it can be said there was no option but to decide not to prosecute the incident as a criminal case.
Among the allegations made, ministry officials were suspected of breach of trust for inflicting financial damage on the state because the ministry's Kinki Local Finance Bureau sold the state-owned plot of land to Moritomo at an unreasonably cheap price. Questions had been raised over the appropriateness of a discount of about 800 million yen from the land's appraised value to cover the cost of removing garbage buried at the site.
It is difficult to determine whether these removal costs were excessive, given that some waste was buried at the site but the exact volume of this garbage was unclear. Considering that prosecutors did not find any evidence that bureau officials attempted to inflict financial damage on the state, it would certainly be difficult to pursue criminal charges as a breach of trust case.
However, the Board of Audit has cast doubt on the basis used for calculating the waste removal costs. Although the board's perspective in examining budget implementation is different from that of an investigation into a criminal incident, it is hard to say that these misgivings have been eliminated.
Explain entire picture
In a debate between party leaders, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe also insisted, "It's important to closely examine why such a huge discount was offered."
The Moritomo side repeatedly engaged in negotiation methods that bordered on intimidation. The ministry buckled under this negotiation technique and swallowed the massive price reduction. It seems that the essence of the problem boils down to that.
Regarding falsified ministry documents about the sale decision, there may be scope for prosecutors to pursue criminal liability if the alterations were found to have significantly distorted the main thrust of the documents.
In the 14 sets of documents in question, details including the negotiation process with Moritomo and the name of the prime minister's wife, Akie Abe, were deleted at the instruction of the ministry's Financial Bureau. However, no alterations were made to core parts of the documents, such as contract details and price. Yet again, it can be said the hurdles to pursuing criminal charges were high.
Of course, the ministry's alterations are unacceptable actions that destroy public confidence in official documents.
Many of the nation's citizens seem to object to the conclusion not to indict the officials. Meanwhile, it also is a fact that this investigation exposed numerous instances of misconduct, which were extremely crude, by the ministry.
Finance Minister Taro Aso has announced he will soon compile the findings of an internal investigation into the document alterations and decide punishments for officials involved. Thoroughly explaining the entire picture of what happened will be the first step toward preventing a recurrence.
(From The Yomiuri Shimbun, June 1, 2018)
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