More Moritomo Gakuen documents disclosed to widow of MOF official
The Finance Ministry disclosed Wednesday another set of documents related to the dubious sale of state-owned land to Moritomo Gakuen to the widow of MOF official Toshio Akagi, who killed himself after being ordered to tamper with official records on the sale.
The newly disclosed 8,800-page documents, kept by the ministry's Kinki Local Finance Bureau, where Akagi was working, contain his handwritten notes as well as emails and other internal records associated with his job.
They are the second set of Moritomo documents voluntarily submitted to prosecutors and disclosed to the widow, Masako Akagi, by the ministry after a bundle of some 2,200 pages made available to her in April.
In response to an Osaka High Court ruling revoking the ministry's decision not to release the documents, Finance Minister Katsunobu Kato in March promised their full disclosure.
The papers that were handed to the widow in April unveiled the process of the land plot in question being sold to the Osaka-based private school operator at a substantial discount as the construction site for an elementary school.
The ministry started tampering with the Moritomo documents after then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told a parliamentary meeting in 2017 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 the planned elementary school.
The ministry intends to gradually disclose all the documents, which total more than 170,000 pages.
In a related development, the ministry disclosed in June 2021 the so-called "Akagi file," which was compiled by the deceased official to show how he was forced to tamper with the documents. However, the partially blackened-out file failed to reveal details of the ministry's misconduct.
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