Tokyo

Property

scandal: Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was this week continuing to deny any involvement in a controversial property deal, in which public land was sold off at a cut-price rate to a school operator with ties to his wife, Akie. Earlier it emerged that his finance ministry had altered documents relating to the deal to remove references to the couple. This new twist in a long-running scandal, which fuelled a sharp drop in Abe’s popularity last year, has caused uproar in Japan and further undermined trust in his government.