Japan Press Weekly

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2011 September 14 - 20 [SCANDAL]

Major life insurance company gives 100 million yen for political favors

The Dai-ichi Life Insurance Company, Ltd. (Dai-ichi Seimei), as part of political machinations regarding its nonpayment of insurance claims, spent a total of 100 million yen to purchase fund-raising party tickets from Dietmemebers of the Democratic and Liberal Democratic parties.

This was revealed by Akahata on September 15 from a document that the company submitted the day before to the Tokyo District Court in a lawsuit filed by company shareholders who claim that political maneuvering by company’s President Watanabe Koichiro resulted in inflicting financial losses on the company.

According to the document, the purchases of party tickets from lawmakers for the past seven years since 2004 amounted to 101 million yen in total.

The insurance company purchased an extraordinary number of tickets in 2006 and 2007. At that time, the Financial Services Agency ordered life insurance companies to disclose information about nonpayment of insurance claims and considered taking punitive actions based on the information.

The document referred to the fact that when the House of Representatives Financial Affairs Committee decided to summon life insurance industry personnel to testify about the nonpayment issue in a committee meeting on May 18, 2007, Dai-ichi Seimei urged four LDP Dietmembers, including Secretary General Ishihara Nobuteru, to work to shorten the time allotted for the hearing.

As a result, the number of unsworn witnesses called was changed to just one, the chairman of the Life Insurance Association of Japan at the time, from the original four major life insurance company heads.

Dai-ichi Seimei purchased party tickets from Ishihara and three other LDP lawmakers who worked to accomplish the company’s demand.

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The document also includes a list in which Japan’s four major life insurance companies grade about 120 Dietmembers of the DPJ, the LDP, and Komei on a 10-point scale in accordance with their contribution to the life insurance industry. Based on the list, insurers then purchase fund-raising party tickets.

Noda’s four Cabinet members appear on the list. They are: Edano Yukio (Industry Minister), Nakagawa Masaharu (Education Minister), Hiraoka Hideo (Justice Minister), and Furukawa Motohisa (National Policy and Economic and Fiscal Policy Minister).