Japan Finance Ministry: Missing documents in Moritomo scandal were discarded
Japan's Finance Ministry says it believes some of the documents related to a controversial sale of state-owned land were discarded before they could be disclosed.
Akagi Toshio, who worked for a regional bureau of the ministry in western Japan, was forced to falsify documents on the heavily discounted sale of state-owned land to school operator Moritomo Gakuen in 2016.
Akagi committed suicide in 2018.
His wife, Masako, demanded the ministry disclose documents it had voluntarily submitted to prosecutors. The ministry on April 4 released over 2,200 pages of materials, including information on negotiations with Moritomo.
The released documents were mostly numbered in chronological order. But many of the numbers were missing. Akagi's lawyers asked the ministry for an explanation.
On Friday, the Finance Ministry issued a written response and released a table showing the process of the land deal.
The ministry says that 382 numbered documents were likely created in the course of dealings with the school operator between June 2013 and June 2016. It added that of these, 74 went missing, and 52 of them were never made public.
The ministry says many of the missing parts are believed to contain references to people in political circles. Most of the documents likely went missing in the record-disposal process.
It was revealed in 2017 that records of negotiations with the school operator had been intentionally destroyed to reduce materials that could lead to parliamentary questioning.
The ministry says it believes that this is when many of the missing documents were discarded.
Among the 52 missing records are documents from April 28, 2014, in which Moritomo's former head Kagoike Yasunori showed bureau officials a photo of him with the wife of then-Prime Minister Abe Shinzo. Kagoike reportedly claimed that Abe's wife had told him, "You should proceed because this is a good piece of land."
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