Japan Press Weekly

Tweet

2013 October 30 - November 5 [SCANDAL]

Mizuho Bank unkind to ordinary people and kind to crime syndicates

Mizuho Bank recently became a focus of public attention for its loans to organized crime syndicate members. Suzuki Noriko, 80, said she has a distasteful memory associated with the name of that bank.

In the 1990s, she was running a small factory pressing women’s clothing in Tokyo. About 20 workers were working at her factory. Suzuki as a business owner got loans of 130 million yen in total from Fuji Bank and Daiichi-Kangyo Bank (which in 2002 became Mizuho Bank after the merger with the Industrial Bank of Japan).

“At that time, when I asked for a new loan of 10 million yen, a bank employee brought it in cash on the same day,” recalled Suzuki.

The collapse of the bubble economy, however, completely changed her life following a wave of bankruptcies of business partners. She could not collect on the bills for the products she delivered. She, therefore, asked the bank for a change in the repayment terms of loans. The monthly repayment was reduced from 1.2 million yen to 700,000 yen. The prolonged ailing economy never turned her business around. She asked again for a further relaxation of the loan terms but was refused.

In 2005 when she failed to pay back the loan at the due date for three consecutive months, Mizuho Bank stopped receiving her loan payments. Suddenly in 2009, however, the bank pressed her to pay 6.8 million yen in accumulated interest in a lump sum, and gave her notice that it will put her 5-story home-cum-factory up for auction if she does not pay it. She was kicked out of her home within a month and her family fell apart.

Suzuki can no longer even rent a room without her grandson’s name as guarantor because she is on a blacklist even though she still continues paying back the debt to Mizuho Bank.

Tied-up loans

Mizuho Bank has provided 200 million yen in loans to crime syndicates 230 times　through the consumer credit firm Orient Corporation, a Mizuho subsidiary.

Bank-affiliated credit firms deal with borrowers and collect mortgages instead of their parent banks. The firms charge extra interest on loans under the guise of guarantee commissions for tie-up loans with their parent banks. The additional interest is higher than that for loans directly lent by banks. Banks, therefore, do not suffer any losses.

The system of tied-up loans calls into question the ethics of bank operations.