[talk] The Flow of Political Money Should Be Put under Public Surveillance

Kenji Yasufuku: Lawyer at Yasufuku Law and Accounting Office

Kenji Yasufuku graduated from the Faculty of Economics of the University of Tokyo in 1972, and was admitted to the bar in 1978. He has specialized in a wide range of areas including the issue of public corporations.

Motoyuki Odachi: Partner of Odachi-Murakata Accounting Office

Motoyuki Odachi was born in 1963. He graduated from the Faculty of Economics of Keio University in 1987. After working at Arthur Andersen, he opened Odachi-Murakata Accounting Office in 1994. He also holds a post as visiting lecturer at the University of Occupational and Environmental Health, Japan. His many published works include Kessannsho No Yomikata (Understanding Financial Statements).

Mahito Ogawa: Certified public accountant with Shin Nihon & Co.

Mahito Ogawa graduated from the Faculty of Commerce of Keio University in 1983, before becoming a certified public accountant in 1990. He currently belongs to Shin Nihon & Co. and is engaged in consulting services such as accounting auditing, special auditing, and risk management for financial institutes in Japan and other countries. He is knowledgeable about U.S. accounting standards.

Nanpei Hayashi: Associate of McKinsey & Company

Nanpei Hayashi was born in 1974. He graduated from the Faculty of Economics of the University of Tokyo, before joining the Industrial Bank of Japan in 1996. He has held his present post since 2000. Mr. Hayashi is a qualified certified public accountant.

Mr. Koichi Kato has admitted misappropriating his office budget for private purposes and has resigned from the Diet. He had successively held posts as Secretary-General and Policy Research Council of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), and played a central role in revising the Law to Regulate Money Used for Political Activities in 1994. And yet, he made inquiries to officials of the Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications about whether his appropriation of political money would be in breach of the law. Mr. Yasufuku, a lawyer, expresses outrage on seeing how ignorant and unaware lawmakers are. Meanwhile, the other three participants, all certified public accountants, voice their objection to the present situation in which political money is exempted from taxation in all aspects. Based on the "principle of fairness," they argue that politicians should also be subject to taxation with respect to moneys related to their private lives and it is urgently necessary to make relevant rules. Another Diet member, Mrs. Makiko Tanaka, reportedly received money that was paid out of the national treasury as wages for her secretaries, which she passed on to a company in which she held a post as executive, without even taking it out of the bag in which it was received. Though the truth has yet to be revealed, it seems that the company paid wages to her secretaries as its dispatched employees and she paid them "a consideration for allowing her to use their names as her secretaries" in the hand. From a legal point of view, these secretaries are deemed to have made a "donation" to the company, but this is not the true nature of the problem. If the public money that were to be paid to government-paid secretaries were received by other persons, it would constitute complete "fraud" because such public money that is paid as wages for secretaries should be paid to the secretaries themselves in any circumstances. In order to regulate such an obscure flow of political money!?, it is necessary to make receipts and payments reports subject to public surveillance. Such "surveillance" will not be effective without rules for disclosure. The above three certified public accountants argue that rules should be made for politicians to submit receipts and payments reports according to business accounting principles such as balance sheets and profit-and-loss statements. Another way to ensure the transparency of the flow of money is to revise the Law to Regulate Money Used for Political Activities and concentrate political money at political parties. However, it is not easy to unite complicated multiple routes of political money into one. For the time being, the most effective measure to regulate political money would be to impose severer punishments breaches of the law.