Part of "Moritomo Documents" Disclosed to Widow of MOF Official

   Tokyo, April 4 (Jiji Press)--Japan's Ministry of Finance on Friday partially disclosed documents regarding the dubious sale of state-owned land to Moritomo Gakuen to the widow of a MOF official who killed himself in the high-profile document-tampering scandal.
   At the ministry, the widow, Masako Akagi, and her proxy lawyer received about 2,200 pages in six volumes of more than 170,000 pages of the documents.
   The disclosed portion, kept by the MOF's Kinki Local Finance Bureau, where her husband, Toshio, was working, contains records on the process of the land sale at a huge discount to the Osaka-based private school operator and email messages sent and received by officials of the ministry and the bureau between June 2013 and June 2016. Some parts have been blacked out.
   The Kinki bureau official committed suicide in March 2018, when he was 54, after being ordered to tamper with Moritomo-related documents. The ministry started the misconduct after then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told a parliamentary meeting that he would quit not only as prime minister but as a lawmaker if he or his wife, Akie, or both were found to have been involved in the land deal. Akie was named honorary principal of an elementary school that was to be built on the land plot in question.
   Masako had been asking for the disclosure of all of the documents, which were voluntarily submitted to public prosecutors by the ministry.

(2025/04/04-18:55)

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