2 Finance Ministry Officials Arrested in Widening Japan Corruption Probe
Two senior Finance Ministry officials were arrested Thursday for allegedly accepting bribes from financial companies, amid a widening probe into influence-peddling by regulators over Japan’s financial industry.
A series of government leaders, including Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, called for investigations and pledged to stamp out corruption.
Finance Minister Hikaru Matsunaga called the arrests “extremely regrettable.”
The arrested officials were Takashi Sakakibara, 38, deputy director of the general affairs division of the ministry’s securities bureau, and Toshio Miyano, 51, a senior trading inspector in the Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission.
Sakakibara--no relation to Eisuke Sakakibara, Japan’s prominent vice finance minister for international affairs--is the first “career” bureaucrat, or elite official groomed for powerful top posts, to be implicated in the corruption scandal.
Prosecutors accuse Sakakibara of accepting lavish dinners and other entertainment from Nomura Securities Co., Nikko Securities and Sumitomo Bank worth $17,000 between 1993 and 1997 in exchange for favorable treatment, the Tokyo district prosecutor’s office said.
Miyano, who is not a career bureaucrat, was suspected of receiving $22,000 from Nomura Securities over four years ending in 1996, prosecutors said.
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