A high-ranking education ministry bureaucrat was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of accepting a bribe by having his child's entrance exam results for a private university falsified in exchange for the bureaucrat's illicit aid to that school.
According to the special investigation squad of the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office, the arrested bureaucrat is Futoshi Sano, the head of the Science and Technology Policy Bureau at the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry. Sano is suspected of having been asked by individuals linked to Tokyo Medical University to help the university be selected for the ministry's private university support program.
Sano, now 58, was allegedly asked to provide this assistance in May 2017 when serving as the head of the Minister's Secretariat of the education ministry.
A company executive, 47, was also arrested on Wednesday, on suspicion of assisting Sano.
In return for his aid, Sano allegedly had the university pad the score on his child's entrance exam so the child would pass the exam in February this year to enter the university.
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