Former Economics Minister Akira Amari speaks during a news conference in Tokyo on Jan 28, shortly before his resignation.Reuters photoTOKYO —
Prosecutors have searched a construction company in Chiba Prefecture at the center of a cash-for-favors scandal involving former economy minister Akira Amari and his secretary.
A regional office of the Urban Renaissance Agency, a government-backed housing development entity, was also searched on Friday, investigative sources said.
Amari, the former point man for implementing Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s economic policies, resigned his Cabinet post in January after the graft allegations first surfaced.
Criminal complaints against Amari and one of his secretaries have since been filed by citizen groups.
In January, Amari told a press conference that one of his state-paid secretaries had received 5 million yen ($46,000) in 2013 from the construction company. At the time, the company was having trouble with the Urban Renaissance Agency, more commonly known as UR, over a housing development project, according to a weekly news magazine report that appeared shortly before Amari resigned.
Amari also said the secretary had personally spent 3 million yen of that money.
The UR confirmed the secretary had attended several meetings with UR officials where, according to the weekly news magazine report, he apparently acted as an intermediary to solve that problem in favor of the construction company.
Amari, a ruling Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker, also admitted at the news conference where he announced his resignation that he had received a total of 1 million yen in cash from the company on two occasions in 2013 and 2014.
Amari said he had instructed his secretary to register the money appropriately as political donations.
Takeshi Isshiki, 62, who was in charge of the construction company’s general affairs, told Kyodo News that he gave Amari and his aides altogether more than 14 million yen as “gratuities and expenses for mediation to gain an advantage in compensation talks with the UR.”
The prosecutors have questioned Isshiki and the UR’s officials, according to the sources.
[“source-Business2community”]
