Japan Ministry of Finance: Missing documents in the Moritomo scandal were rejected

The Japanese Ministry of Finance says that some of the documents were rejected in connection with a controversial sale of state country before they could be disclosed.

Akagi Toshio, who worked for a regional office of the Ministry in the west of Japan, had to fake documents in 2016 on the strongly reduced sale of land operator Moritomo Gakuen.

Akagi committed suicide in 2018.

His wife Masako asked the Ministry to reveal documents that voluntarily presented it to the prosecutors. The ministry published over 2,200 pages of material on April 4, including information on negotiations with Moritomo.

The released documents were largely numbered in chronological order. But many of the numbers were missing. Akagi's lawyers asked the Ministry for an explanation.

The Ministry of Finance published a written answer on Friday and published a table that shows the process of the land contract.

The ministry says that between June 2013 and June 2016, 382 numbered documents were probably created as part of the school operator. It added that 74 had disappeared and 52 of them were never published.

The Ministry says that many of the missing parts contain references to people in political circles. Most of the documents were probably disappeared in the record disposal process.

It became known in 2017 that records on negotiations with the school operator had been deliberately destroyed to reduce materials that could lead to parliamentary surveys.

The Ministry says it is of the opinion that in this case many of the missing documents have been rejected.

The 52 missing records include documents of April 28, 2014, in which Moritomo's former boss Kagoike Yasunori office officials showed a photo of him with the wife of the then Prime Minister ABE Shinzo. Kagoike said that ABE said to him: “You should continue because this is a good piece of land.”