Japan’s finance minister will take a pay cut over graft scandal
JAPANESE Finance Minister Taro Aso will take a pay cut to take responsibility for officials under him who altered documents on a cut-price land sale to a school with links to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his wife Akie.
Aso, 77, who is also the deputy prime minister, said he wasn’t considering resigning.
He is the highest-ranking official to be punished over the scandal, which has dragged on for 16 months, harming the government’s popularity and throwing the legislative calendar into disarray.
He said a probe by his own ministry showed that neither he nor Akie Abe had any connection with the altering of the documents.
Aso will voluntarily forgo the ministerial component of his annual pay, costing him about 1.7 million yen (R196 000).
The fine doesn’t add up to much financially for Aso, but it does have symbolic significance.
“It indicates the seriousness with which Aso and by extension the Abe administration is making a show of taking the transgressions,” said Musashino University Institute for Global Affairs’ Jun Okumura.
Okumura added that the Abe administration would be looking to put the scandal behind it and make a renewed push on its legislative agenda.
“The altering of public documents is unacceptable. I feel a deep responsibility for that as head of the government,” Abe told reporters in Tokyo.
“I want Deputy Prime Minister Aso to lead from the front in fulfilling his responsibility.”
The school operator was known for its nationalist leanings and ran a kindergarten in Osaka that espoused elements of the prewar curriculum.
The scandal has already brought the resignation of tax chief Nobuhisa Sagawa, who stepped down in March.
He said in parliament afterward that no one from Abe’s office had ordered the falsification of the documents.
It’s unclear whether the punishments will put the issue of the land sale and altered documents to rest and enable the Abe government to move forward with its agenda.