Deputies are given everything
Even prime ministers
Kiichi Miyazawa, finance minister in Yoshiro Mori's cabinet, may suffer for being overly zealous in the fight against monopolies he led in the early 1990s as Japan's prime minister. Recently he was accused of giving a bribe to the head of one of the parliamentary factions. Miyazawa tried in this way to get parliamentarians to agree to increase antitrust fines.

The indictment against Kiichi Miyazawa was made Monday in the Tokyo District Higher Court by Kishiro Nakamura, a former member of parliament and minister of construction in Miyazawa's cabinet since 1992. The court is considering Nakamura's appeal against his 1997 conviction. He was accused of accepting a bribe of 10 million yen from a construction company in 1992 as payment for settling the company's conflict with the Fair Trade Commission, the main fighter against monopolism. Then Nakamura was sentenced to a fine of 10 million yen and one and a half years in prison.
Nakamura took advantage of the new hearings in his case to make scandalous revelations. The former minister spoke about an episode dating back to 1991, when he headed the parliamentary faction of the Liberal Democratic Party, which opposed increasing fines for violating antitrust laws. According to Nakamura, one day the then Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa invited him to his residence and handed him a paper envelope with 3 million yen (about $27 thousand). “Miyazawa did not say why he was giving me money,” Nakamura said, “but I am convinced that he wanted me to help revise the antitrust laws in the direction of increasing the maximum amount of fines.” As Nakamura admitted, he could not refuse the money that the head of government gave him. And he added that he considers Miyazawa’s subsequent appointment as Minister of Construction to be payment for his silence regarding the “anti-monopoly” bribe.
At a press conference called immediately after Nakamura made his accusations, Kiichi Miyazawa said: “If this was a really big deal, then I should remember it. Otherwise, I think it’s just a mistake.” However, if the veracity of Nakamura's testimony is proven in court, Japan's largest opposition Democratic Party will seek Miyazawa's resignation. This could be a major blow not only for the Liberal Democratic Party, but also for Japan: the 80-year-old finance minister is the key government figure in charge of leading Japan out of its long-running economic crisis.

ANDREY Kommersant-IVANOV

Newspaper "Kommersant" No. 86 dated May 17, 2000, p. 10