Prosecutor arrested over data tampering in postal abuse case+

TOKYO, Sept. 21 Kyodo -
A prosecutor at the Osaka District Public Prosecutors Office who led a botched
investigation into a postal abuse case was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of
altering computer data seized during the probe, the Supreme Public Prosecutors
Office said.
The arrest of Tsunehiko Maeda, 43, has turned the alleged document fabrication,
in which an arrested senior welfare ministry official was eventually acquitted,
into an unprecedented criminal case involving the prosecutors' elite
investigative squad.
In announcing the arrest, Tetsuo Ito, deputy chief prosecutor at the Supreme
Public Prosecutors Office, also said the prosecutors have given up appealing
the Osaka District Court's Sept. 10 acquittal ruling for the official, Atsuko
Muraki, finalizing the court decision.
The top prosecutors office searched Maeda's home in Osaka Prefecture and his
office at the Osaka District Public Prosecutors Office in connection with his
alleged data tampering.
''We thought launching an investigation swiftly would be a sincere response to
this problem,'' Ito said at a news conference in Tokyo.
The Supreme Public Prosecutors Office said it will review the prosecutors'
investigation into the alleged abuse of postal discounts for the handicapped,
with plans to conclude it by the end of the year.
Maeda, who served as a principal prosecutor over the case, was known among his
peers as an expert in obtaining confessions in well-known criminal cases.
He is suspected of altering the date of a document on a floppy disk seized in
May last year from Muraki's subordinate from June 1, 2004, to June 8, 2004,
using a personal computer around mid-July 2009.
Earlier Tuesday, Maeda admitted to the allegation when he was questioned by
other prosecutors, according to prosecution sources.
Altering evidence in a criminal case involving others is punishable under the
Penal Code by up to two years in prison or a fine of up to 200,000 yen.
Muraki, who was a director general at the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry at
the time of her arrest, was reinstated late Tuesday after her acquittal was
finalized, though her position is pending, according to the welfare ministry.
She is likely to be given a director-general post, according to ministry
officials.
''The basic investigation was not thorough,'' Tadafumi Oshima, deputy chief
prosecutor at the Osaka District Public Prosecutors Office, which led the
investigation into the postal abuse case, said at a news conference in Osaka on
Tuesday, while offering an apology to Muraki.
In a related development the same day, the defense counsel in a separate fraud
case in Tokyo decided to file a criminal complaint against Maeda on suspicion
of perjury during the trial, counsel sources said.
The acquittal of Muraki was being widely expected, given that the court had
decided not to accept most of the depositions by her alleged accomplices and
witnesses as evidence on the grounds that the prosecutors could have influenced
their statements.
The Osaka prosecutors did not submit the disk concerned as evidence in the
trial, but the alleged falsification of data on it may be a further indication
that prosecutors investigated the case according to their own assumptions.
At a press conference in Tokyo earlier in the day, Muraki's lawyer, Junichiro
Hironaka, said he will consider filing a criminal complaint against the
prosecutors for the alleged destruction of evidence, criticizing the event as
''an awful case, if true, that would shake the very foundations of
investigation.''
Muraki, 54, was acquitted of a charge that she instructed her subordinate,
41-year-old Tsutomu Kamimura who is being tried separately, to fabricate and
issue an official document for an organization that subsequently used it to
abuse the mail discount system for the handicapped.
According to the ruling, the Osaka prosecutors' special investigative unit
seized the disk concerned from Kamimura's home on May 26 last year and it
contained the text of the official document and was last updated at 1:20 a.m.
on June 1, 2004.
Muraki's defense counsel obtained the contents of the disk later in the form of
the prosecutors' investigative report and submitted it as evidence in the
trial. When the disk was returned from the prosecutors, they found that the
date of the update had been changed to June 8, counsel sources said.
The prosecutors argued during the trial that Muraki instructed Kamimura to
issue the document ''in about early June,'' but the disk updated shortly past
midnight on May 31 would have contradicted the argument.
Lead counsel Hironaka said, citing Muraki's statement, she is hoping to
attribute the ''terrible'' incident not only to the principal prosecutor,
adding, ''It would be unprecedented if the prosecutor in person falsified the
data to conform to the (assumed) story.''
Muraki said at a separate news conference later in Tokyo, ''It is a problem in
which trust in prosecutors is at stake. I want the truth to be clarified about
why this happened. I'm not thinking about pursuing the responsibility of a
particular individual.''
==Kyodo
2010-09-22 00:03:38


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