Gaming | Accusations mount against Japan lawmaker embroiled in bribery case

The private political office of a Japanese lawmaker arrested this month on suspicion of receiving bribes from a Chinese company may have violated Japan’s Political Funds Control Law,
In a possible violation of the law, lawmaker Tsukasa Akimoto’s office is thought to have diverted money from a Tokyo-based consultancy to pay the salaries of his private secretaries, the Japan Times has reported. If so, the funds would need to marked as “donations”, but the lawmaker’s funding reports between 2016 and 2018 had no mention of such money.
Lawmaker Akimoto of Japan’s ruling party was arrested earlier this month on suspicion of accepting bribes from a Shenzhen-based company looking to invest in the under-development casino industry. The payoffs may have amounted to about 3.7 million yen ($34,000), the Tokyo Public Prosecutor’s office said, with the bribes including cash, plane tickets and hotel rooms.
According to Bloomberg, the case has dealt a blow to already unpopular plans to open the country to the gaming industry.
Prosecutors unearthed the possibly unlawful payments to Akimoto’s staff during their investigation of flows of money involving Akimoto between 2015 and 2018, the years in which the bribery was said to have occurred.
Citing unidentified sources, the Japan Times reported that the Shenzhen-based company, which is primarily an online sports lottery provider, may have approached the Japanese lawmaker in order to turn around its struggling business.
It said that the Chinese company organized a casino-related symposium in Okinawa Prefecture in August 2017, where Akimoto was asked to give a keynote speech. The lawmaker was supposed to be compensated in the amount of 500,000 yen for his speech, but the figure was revised to 2 million yen after it was made known, three days after the speech, that Akimoto would be made a minister overseeing the government’s plan to roll out casinos in Japan.
Other ties being investigated by prosecutors include a 3 million yen financial contribution to Akimoto’s election campaign in September 2017 and a visit to Shenzhen in December of that year, which included a stop at the Chinese company’s headquarters. DB