MNI: Japan Ex-MOF Sagawa: No Order From PM To Alter Land Files

     TOKYO (MNI) - The key witness in Japan's year-long political scandal

testified Tuesday that neither Prime Minister Shinzo Abe nor Finance Minister

Taro Aso ordered bureaucrats to rewrite public documents on a questionable sale

of state land.

     Nobuhisa Sagawa, 60, who stepped down as National Tax Agency chief on March

9, testified under oath at the Upper House Budget Committee that the act of

falsifying documents to cover up the details of the land sale was solely done by

the Finance Ministry's Financial Department, which manages national assets.

     He also said the Financial Department, which he headed from 2016 to 2017,

didn't consult or coordinate with the MOF minister's secretariat or the Prime

Minister's Office during the negations on the state land sale from 2013 to 2016,

repeating his comments in his testimony last year as an unsworn, expert witness.

     Sagawa was not involved in the negotiations. He took office in June 2016, a

few days before the land deal was signed.

     --NO SCANDAL DETAILS

     Sagawa said he didn't think there was any political influence from Prime

Minister Abe, his wife Akie or Finance Minister Aso on the land sale.

     But he also declined comment on many aspects of the scandal, such as who

ordered the rewrite of the documents, when and why, using his constitutional

right to refuse to give testimony on the grounds that it might incriminate him.

     Sagawa told lawmakers last year that there had been no price negotiations

with the buyer prior to the land sale in June 2016 and that government records

of the negotiations had been discarded. Audio recordings and internal documents

regarding the deal were uncovered later.

     Earlier this month, Finance Minister Aso revealed that "some" MOF officials

removed the reference to Aso, Prime Minister Abe and his wife Akie, among

others, from those documents. Abe and Aso have denied that they were involved in

the land deal and said they didn't tell anybody to rewrite official records.

     Abe has repeatedly said in the Diet that he would "resign" as a politician

if either he or his wife were implicated in the dubious land deal involving the

school.

     Sagawa also refused to say how he felt when he saw the name of Prime

Minister's wife, Akie, mentioned in the documents.

     --PM WIFE'S ROLE

     The opposition is also demanding sworn testimony by Akie Abe, who had

direct contacts with the buyer of the land, Yasunori Kagoike, the then president

of scandal-hit school operator Moritomo Gakuen in Osaka, western Japan.

     Kagoike and his wife, Junko, have been in custody since prosecutors

arrested them in July 2017 on allegations that they fraudulently received state

subsidies to build an elementary school.

     About a year ago, Kagoike testified under oath in parliament that he had

received a Y1 million donation in the name of Prime Minister Abe, repeating his

earlier claim that political influence helped him prepare for opening a

nationalist school.

     Abe has denied that he made any such donation and has shown displeasure

that his name was used in the past to drum up support for promoting right-wing

education.

     In March 2017, Kagoike also testified that Abe's wife Akie was "like a

politician" and he believed that she played a role in expediting the process of

the land deal. Abe's wife temporarily served as a "honorable principal" for the

planned school.

     Moritomo Gakuen, which owns a kindergarten and a nursery school, bought a

piece of land from the government at a huge discount to build a nationalist

elementary school.

     The school bought an 8,770-square-meter government-owned plot of land at

Y134 million, only 14% of the appraised value of Y956 million. The school said

it needed a significant discount to pay to dispose of the garbage left in the

ground of the tract.

--MNI Tokyo Bureau; tel: +81 90-4670-5309; email: max.sato@marketnews.com

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