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2017 November 22 - 28 TOP3 [POLITICS]

Board of Audit: Finance Ministry’s 90% discount on land deal for Moritomo inappropriate

The Board of Audit acknowledged that the Finance Ministry’s decision to offer a 90% discount on a national land deal to the school corporation “Moritomo Gakuen” was inappropriate, Akahata learned on November 21.

The exceptionally favorable treatment by the ministry’s local bureau in Osaka came to light in February as Japanese Communist Party lawmakers Miyamoto Takeshi and Tatsumi Kotaro took up the issue in the Diet. In addition, it is alleged that Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s wife, who has close ties with the Moritomo president, helped the school corporation obtain the outrageous discount.

In June 2016, the Finance Ministry’s Kinki Finance Bureau sold national land in Osaka’s Toyonaka City to Moritomo Gakuen at the price of 134 million yen, about one-tenth of its market value of 956 million yen. The regional bureau asserts that it provided the price reduction in order to compensate Moritomo for the clean-up costs of abandoned waste buried in the land. The cost of disposal was calculated by the bureau with the help of the Land Ministry’s local bureau.

In the Board of Audit’s report scheduled to come out on November 22, the board states that it found unconvincing points in the preconditions that the Finance Ministry’s bureau had used to estimate the amount of waste on the land in question, such as the extent in area and the thickness of layers which were deemed to contain waste as well as the density of undesirable materials in the dirt. The board also points out that it could not confirm the appropriateness of unit disposal costs used in the estimate.

The Board of Audit made the inspection in response to a request from the House of Councilors in March.

Past related articles:
> Kagoike’s testimony damages Abe gov’t [March 25, 2017]
> Abe’s wife-associated school corporation gets national land at exceptionally low price [February 11, 2017]