Demands Over Loans Scandal Poised To Delay Japan Budget
The Age
Monday January 29, 1996
Tokyo, Sunday.
Shinshinto, Japan's largest opposition party, will boycott debate on the 1996 Budget until the Government provides more details on the huge $15 billion Jusen loans payout.
Shinshinto party officials warned at the weekend that they opposed the Government's decision to use up to $15 billion of taxpayers' funds to mop up the debts left in the Jusen loans scandal.
The opposition has charged that the information so far disclosed on the plan is not enough to determine how the Government calculated the massive amount of funds required to liquidate the Jusen housing firms.
Shinshinto is demanding that the Government release the names of the largest borrowers who obtained loans of $700, 000 and over from the Jusen companies during the 1990s property boom.
Under a Finance Ministry proposal, the details of which were released on Friday, the Hashimoto Government has agreed to pay half of all Jusen housing loan losses, which are likely to exceed $20 billion.
The proposal has led to renewed calls from the opposition parties and the media for an immediate election.
While the Government is moving deeper into the financial mire over the scandal, there are few tangible signs that it will prosecute any of the leading bureaucrats, politicians and organised crime figures involved in the bad loans fiasco.
The loans scandal continued to unfold at the weekend with the disclosure that a top member of the Government received a $3 million political donation from a leading Jusen company borrower.
The Social Democratic party secretary, General Kanju Sato, is said to have received the money through a company in which he had served as an auditor for 20 years. He quit the auditor's post last week, denying he knew anything about the company's Jusen links.
Despite all the opposition's tough talk and speculation about elections, the Prime Minister, Mr Ryutaro Hashimoto, appears to be under no immediate pressure to either call a poll or drop the Government's much criticised bail-out plans.
Last week he bluntly told the Diet (Parliament) that he had no intention of quitting or taking responsibility for the Jusen bad loans scandal even though he was Finance Minister in 1990 when the lending regulations were relaxed by his ministry to allow the Jusen companies to lend billions of dollars in unsecured loans.
Mr Hashimoto said it was now his responsibility to solve the Jusen problems, while building trust - at home and abroad - in the nation's financial system.
The Shinshinto leader, Mr Ichiro Ozawa, has so far failed - despite his posturing - to exploit the Jusen issue. He is hampered by the fact that he has his Jusen problems too, as members of the opposition are also directly linked to the scandal.
© 1996 The Age
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