Photo/Illutration Ryota Takeda, right, the telecommunications minister, receives a report June 4 on wining and dining of ministry officials by Tohokushinsha Film. Corp. executives. (Takayuki Kakuno)

An outside panel looking into a scandal involving senior telecommunications ministry bureaucrats and a media company that employs Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s eldest son was no nearer to offering conclusive answers in a final report it issued June 4.

The panel chaired by lawyer Genta Yoshino sought to uncover how wining and dining by executives of Tohokushinsha Film Corp. affected monitoring of foreign share ownership in the satellite broadcaster.

But an absence of documents related to the issue, coupled with denials by all the ministry officials questioned, stymied the investigation.

Yoshino's team was left to conclude there “was a high possibility” that a ministry division chief was aware in August 2017 that foreign individuals and companies owned more than a 20-percent stake in Tohokushinsha, a clear violation of the Broadcasting Law.

In light of that, the telecommunications minister should have immediately retracted the government's approval for satellite broadcasting operations given to Tohokushinsha.

But no such action was taken, ostensibly because ministry officials kept insisting they were unaware of the legal violation.

“(As a result) the criticism that administrative matters may have been distorted cannot be denied,” the report said.

Ministry officials contend they first became aware of the illegal status of foreign ownership in Tohokushinsha in March 2021 after the issue surfaced in the media.

The panel report said company executives met with telecommunications ministry officials on Aug. 18, 2017, and that it was likely the issue of illegal share status was raised at the meeting.

Although the report was unable to pin down whether repeated wining and dining of ministry officials affected policy decisions, Yoshino minced no words at a June 4 news conference when he said, “It is clear that trust in the administrative branch has been damaged.”

Continuing stonewalling by ministry officials on the issue of Tohokushinsha’s illegal status meant that no disciplinary measures were taken.

But a separate report also released on June 4 found that an additional 32 ministry officials were found to have been wined and dined by not only Tohokushinsha, but also Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. as well as group companies in violation of the National Public Service Ethics Code.

All 32 were handed various disciplinary punishments the same day, with five high-ranking officials given pay cuts.

There are strong suspicions that even more ministry officials were entertained by other companies. But ministry officials looking into the matter told a June 4 news conference that a number of those companies had refused to cooperate with the investigation.

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