Ozawa not charged, lawmaker Ishikawa indicted over fund misreport

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TOKYO, Feb. 4 Kyodo -
Prosecutors dropped a case against Democratic Party of Japan Secretary General
Ichiro Ozawa over the alleged false reporting of his political funds Thursday,
while indicting DPJ lawmaker Tomohiro Ishikawa for misreporting the funds when
he served as Ozawa's secretary in 2004.
''The case concerns the crime of trying to hide the financial sources for a
land purchase,'' Tatsuya Sakuma, head of the special investigative squad at the
Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office, said at a press conference.
But the office decided not to seek criminal charges against the ruling party
kingpin after questioning him twice last month because ''there was not enough
evidence to convict him at trial as a conspirator,'' he said.
Ozawa told reporters that he regards the prosecutors' decision as being the
result of a fair investigation and that he will stay in his current post.
Ishikawa, a 36-year-old House of Representatives member of the DPJ, said in a
statement distributed through a lawyer, ''It's no mistake that I wrote a
political funds report inappropriately and I deeply regret it.''
Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama told reporters it is regrettable that Ishikawa
has been accused, and said he believes prosecutors acted fairly in deciding not
to indict Ozawa.
Hatoyama also indicated that he has no intention of removing Ozawa from his
party No. 2 post.
Ozawa's current state-funded secretary Takanori Okubo, 48, and Mitsutomo Ikeda,
32, a former secretary who succeeded Ishikawa, were also indicted on a charge
of violating the Political Funds Control Law.
According to the indictment, the three were involved as secretaries when
Ozawa's political fund management body Rikuzankai failed to book in its 2004
report 545 million yen in income, including 400 million yen borrowed from
Ozawa, plus some 352 million yen used to buy land in Tokyo's Setagaya Ward.
In 2005, the body listed 300 million yen in fictitious donations from a related
entity as well as the roughly 352 million yen land cost, and in 2007 failed to
make a report when it returned the 400 million yen to Ozawa.
The total sum subject to the indictment comes to about 2,029 million yen, the
chief investigator said, while declining to comment on the origin of the 400
million yen provided by Ozawa, saying, ''We'd like to clear it up in the trial
when necessary.''
The prosecutors are believed to suspect that the unreported 400 million yen
included 50 million yen in secret donations from Mizutani Construction Co., a
subcontractor on a project to build Isawa Dam in Iwate Prefecture, where
Ozawa's constituency is located.
But Ozawa said in his press conferences after being questioned by the
prosecutors on Jan. 23 and 31 that the money he lent the body is his personal
assets kept at his office and that he has never received any illicit money.
Ishikawa, who was in charge of accounting at Rikuzankai, also denied having
received any money from Mizutani Construction, a company based in Kuwana, Mie
Prefecture, investigative sources said earlier.
While the prosecutors' actions Thursday have put an end to their latest probe
into political fund scandals, they will continue the investigation if
necessary, Sakuma said.
Thursday was the deadline for the prosecutors to detain the former secretaries
who they arrested Jan. 15 as well as Okubo, who was taken in the following day.
After working for Ozawa, Ishikawa won his first Diet seat in the lower house in
2007 following the resignation of a DPJ lawmaker and was reelected in the lower
house election last August, defeating the now deceased veteran Liberal
Democratic Party lawmaker Shoichi Nakagawa.
Okubo is on trial over separate accounting irregularities at Rikuzankai after
being indicted without arrest. The scandal involving massive donations from
general contractor Nishimatsu Construction Co. led to the resignation of Ozawa
as DPJ president last May while the party was in opposition.
The latest decisions by the prosecutors effectively wrapped up more than a year
of investigations into funding scandals that rocked Japanese political circles,
triggered by the revelation of Nishimatsu's donations.
==Kyodo
2010-02-04 23:07:57