By IRNA-Kyodo
Tokyo : The Defense Ministry has built slush funds systematically for use by its senior officials and related departments from state budgets allocated for rewarding informants, former defense officials and other sources said Saturday.
The alleged accounting gimmick using fake receipts has continued for several decades, the sources said in a revelation expected to impact the ongoing Diet debate on a bill to resume Japan’s refueling mission in the Indian Ocean.
Parliament debate on the government-proposed bill to restart the ission to support the U. S. -led anti-terrorism operations in and around Afghanistan has already been affected by a spate of defense- related scandals, including the bribe-taking allegation against former Vice Defense Minister Takemasa Moriya.
While the backdoor money is said to be aimed at supplementing the ministry’s small social expenses, there is also a possibility that Defense Ministry officials used it for other purposes, such as wining and dining among themselves.
The government earmarked 164 million yen in fiscal 2007 for the informant reward system, which under ministry regulations should be used for expenses to gather information and materials and to investigate internal crimes, although the money has mostly been used for information-gathering.
But much of the budget allocation has been amassed as off-the-book funds and has not been used up each year, hence cumulating to at least tens of millions of yen over the decades, according to the sources.
Asked to comment on the latest allegation, Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba told Kyodo News on Saturday, ”I’d like to refrain from commenting as the facts are indeterminable,” but said the ministry will carry out an internal probe.
Tokyo prosecutors appear to have seized secret books for the funds when it searched the Defense Ministry late last month as part of the investigation into Moriya’s bribery case.
In order to build off-the-book money, ministry staffers, such as those in the minister’s secretariat, fabricated receipts using the names of retired ministry employees in the guise of informants, the sources said.
The receipts were made up to pretend that the ministry almost fully used up the budgets every year through expenditures to wine and dine or provide cash every month to informants, they said.
The slush funds are believed to be aimed at supplementing large shortages in the ministry’s budget for social expenses, which was about 6. 8 million yen in fiscal 2007, to enable senior officials of the ministry and the Self-Defense Forces and main departments to use them in a flexible manner.
They were recorded in secret accounts opened in the name of fictitious organizations, but many receipts, being fake, showed unnatural transactions such as one person having received cash every month for years, the sources said.
Each department concerned of the ground, maritime and air arms of the SDF as well as the ministry has its own secret book and managed slush funds basically with receipts for use in social expenses in the name of gathering information, they said.
But some of the money was used for wining and dining among ministry employees themselves, one of the sources said.