Thread by @jakeadelstein

For 18 years, I followed the career of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe: autocratic thuggery, crony corruption, lies, and xenophobia
He turned Japan into a country that can't tell the truth

This is the $11.8 million dollar eulogy he deserved

#DishonestAbe

thedailybeast.com/former-japanes…

The Moritomo Gakuen scandal is a microcosm of Abe corruption

Ministry of Finance intervened to cut the price, by nearly $8 million, of a plot of land purchased by a right-wing private-school operator, Moritomo Gakuen, who planned to build the Abe Shinzo Memorial Elementary

Abe’s wife was the honorary principal of the school. He swore he’d resign if he had any hand in the crooked land deal—and then the cover-up began.

The affair did not end with that revelation. In 2018, a civil servant named Toshio Akagi, who worked in a local bureau of the finance ministry, committed suicide. He left behind an extraordinary 518-page collection of documents, known as the Akagi File, detailing everything

At first, Abe’s government, which ostensibly held onto the file because it contained official records, denied its existence; only last year did it finally release the documents to the public after a concerted campaign by Akagi’s widow, Masako. They were heavily redacted

The documents showed how Akagi had responded to one email request from the ministry in March 2017 to cook the records on the land purchase. “I am uncomfortable and I feel conflicted about altering documents dealing with a confirmed and concluded matter.”

A number of other bureaucrats were implicated in falsifying official records of the land deal, but none were ever prosecuted

In May 2018, the head of Osaka’s Special Prosecutor Office, Machiko Yamamoto, announced that no indictments were being issued for the 38 suspects involved

Osaka’s Special Prosecutor Office, Machiko Yamamoto, e refused to give any details or answer questions. A few months later, Yamamoto was promoted and moved to another office. This put her beyond the reach of the Prosecutorial Review Board which might have asked her real questions

Masako Akagi sued the government for compensation over her husband’s death. In December last year, the government settled the claim, shutting the case down.
That’s the Abe administration. Honorable and honest bureaucrats are fired or kill themselves; liars and henchmen rewarded

Yet #DishonestAbe never faced any consequences. He was never prosecuted for a crime, nor were those who covered up for him. And that’s why we have a Japanese government that can’t tell the truth. Lying is rewarded and truth-telling is punished.

thedailybeast.com/former-japanes…

I hope someday that Japan rights itself and Ms. Yamamoto is forced to apologize for essentially condoning forgery and destruction of government documents.
Trump stole important official documents—in Japan bureaucrats altered them, forged them and destroyed them for Abe.

If you're intrigued by the Japanese politician who was Trump before Trump and even offered Donald Trump advice on how to crush The New York Times--the way he crushed the Asahi Shimbun, have a read!
thedailybeast.com/shinzo-abe-was…