November 21, 2019
Can someone say quid pro quo? In a scandal that continues to rock the Fukui prefecture, an investigation involving a former mayor and major utility has now found that more than 100 former and current gov’t officials received gifts or money!
This photo taken from a Kyodo News helicopter on May 30, 2019, shows the No. 3, left, and No. 4 reactors at Kansai Electric Power Co.’s Takahama nuclear power plant in Fukui Prefecture, central Japan.
November 21, 2019
FUKUI, Japan (Kyodo) — A total of 109 current and former Fukui prefectural officials received money and other gifts from a former deputy mayor of Takahama who is at the heart of a gift scandal involving Kansai Electric Power Co., an investigative committee said Thursday.
The committee set up by the prefecture last month had been looking into whether Eiji Moriyama exercised influence over the central Japan prefecture’s public work projects, after the late deputy mayor of Takahama was found to have given massive gifts to the utility’s top officials.
The revelation that the utility officials received a total of 320 million yen ($3 million) worth of gifts from 2006 led to the resignation of its Chairman Makoto Yagi. Kansai Electric operates a nuclear plant in Takahama and Moriyama, who died in March, served as an adviser to its subsidiary for more than 30 years.
The three committee members, all lawyers, interviewed about 300 people including former governors, deputy governors and other senior officials in compiling their report.
Moriyama had also served as a human rights researcher for the prefecture between 1971 and 2018.
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