Abe Denies Resignation Remark Influence on Tampering

Tokyo, March 19 (Jiji Press)--Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe denied Monday that a remark he made last year in parliament led to the manipulation of Ministry of Finance documents on a state land plot sold to school operator Moritomo Gakuen. The denial came after MOF Financial Bureau Director-General Mitsuru Ota, at Friday's meeting of the Budget Committee of the House of Councillors, the upper chamber of parliament, said that the document tampering was apparently conducted in light of "all related parliamentary answers by the government," including the prime minister's remark in question. On Feb. 17 last year, Abe told a House of Representatives Budget Committee meeting that he would resign as prime minister and as a lawmaker if he or his wife, Akie, were proved to have been involved in the deal to sell the land to the school operator at a massive discount. Abe's wife was once appointed honorary principal of an elementary school that Moritomo planned to set up on the land plot in western Japan. In the document alteration scandal, related descriptions, including her name, were deleted from the MOF documents. "I guess they were deleted without regard to whether they were about my wife," Abe told Monday's Upper House Budget Committee meeting. The prime minister claimed that he did not even know that the MOF documents in question existed, adding that it was therefore impossible for him to tell officials to manipulate them. During the committee meeting, Japanese Communist Party official Akira Koike asked why the name of Akie Abe was mentioned in the original documents. Ota, answered, "I think that was basically because she is the prime minister's wife." The opposition camp reacted excitedly to this clear answer. "It's a significant remark suggesting (the Moritomo case was) handled as a matter linked to the prime minister's wife," Koike said. Abe denied again the same day that his wife was involved in the Moritomo land deal. "There's no evidence at all" for Abe's claim about his wife, Tetsuro Fukuyama, secretary-general of the opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, told reporters. The claim was "unconvincing as she hasn't spoken (about the Moritomo issue) in public settings." On plunging public support for his administration in opinion polls by media organizations, Abe said: "The document manipulation issue has shaken people's confidence in public administration as a whole. I take the situation seriously." The opposition Democratic Party requested a vote within Monday on the summoning of former National Tax Agency chief Nobuhisa Sagawa, who was head of the Financial Bureau when the documents were altered, to parliament for sworn testimony on the issue. The party also asked for the summoning of Akie Abe and Saeko Tani, who served as an assistant to the prime minister's wife as a government official. "I don't think at all that Sagawa was under various pressures," Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso said, denying any political pressure to manipulate the documents. Ota said officials at the Financial Bureau were involved in the document tampering, but he added that they carried out the manipulation without any instructions from their superiors. END