Japan Shows 5th Set of Moritomo Papers to Ex-Official’s Widow

Tokyo, Dec. 17 (Jiji Press)–Japan’s Ministry of Finance disclosed Wednesday a fifth set of documents related to a dubious land sale to Moritomo Gakuen to the widow of a MOF regional official who committed suicide after being ordered to tamper with official records on the sale. The Moritomo documents, totaling more than 170,000 pages, were voluntarily submitted by the ministry to prosecutors. They are being released to the widow of the official, Toshio Akagi, in stages from April. The newly disclosed 34,000 pages of documents include messages between Akagi and other ministry officials, as well as emails sent and received by senior officials of the ministry’s Kinki Local Finance Bureau, where Akagi worked. His widow, Masako, has called for the ministry to prioritize the disclosure of emails from Nobuhisa Sagawa, former director-general of the ministry’s Financial Bureau, who is believed to have been behind the falsified documents on the land sale to the school operator, once linked to the late former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s wife, Akie. But the ministry said that the emails had been automatically deleted by the system. “I can’t do this without believing that something will be found,” she told reporters after receiving the latest release at the ministry. She added that investigations should be carried out by a third party, not by an individual like her. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]