Ex-farm minister Yoshikawa pleads not guilty to receiving bribes

That's how this place works.

Old men pulling secret strings and young people terrified to question their elders.

Yoshiki Akita, 87, the former representative of the egg production company based in western Japan's Hiroshima Prefecture, admitted to bribing Yoshikawa

Akita: "I paid him a bribe."

Yoshikawa: "He did not pay me a bribe."

2+2=5

I smell a suspended sentence in the works!

Weird. Being a (former) Japanese minister he knows he's very likely above the law, and even if he's found guilty he just has to do a press conference, pretend to cry, and bow his head for five seconds.

So he's either really trying to protest his innocence, or he's hiding something way bigger than a bribe.

"political donation."???

Guilty as H$ll, he needs to man up and admit his guilt, taking money while in office from an industry related to his work is as guilty as it gets.

I mean, it was obvious how it was going to end. So many people have been convicted of corruption here in the last 30 years that I could count them on one hand. And in most cases, they were scapegoats.

Pretty cheap to buy political influence here.

Damn right! Buying a Minister-level politician in China or Vietnam requires at least more than 1 million USD at minimum, and you have to make a contractual arrangement to give a high percentage in royalties/profits or shares to him or her.

Buying a minister in Japan here is equivalent to buy a mid-tier bureaucrat in a province of China or Vietnam. Pretty damn low, I think!

What he wants to say is that his bribe is not any larger than the other minister's bribes, so why all the noise?

Perhaps he'll be eggziled.

Pretty cheap to buy political influence here.

Damn right! Buying a Minister-level politician in China or Vietnam requires at least more than 1 million USD at minimum, and you have to make a contractual arrangement to give a high percentage in royalties/profits or shares to him or her.

Buying a minister in Japan here is equivalent to buy a mid-tier bureaucrat in a province of China or Vietnam. Pretty damn low, I think!

They're very cagey about it here, i.e. breaking things up into small installments, etc., so that things look far more innocuous.

Have you ever been to an egg production company? Those places stink. The company probably was bribing him just to come visit.

Takamori Yoshikawa pleaded not guilty Tuesday to receiving bribes...

...claimed that he had taken it as a "political donation."...

...received money from the company head on three occasions at a Tokyo hotel...

Yeah, because all legitimate "political donations" are given in cash at hotels.

Go straight to prison, do not pass go, you corrupt man.

They're very cagey about it here, i.e. breaking things up into small installments, etc., so that things look far more innocuous.

I forgot to add that the 1 million $ minimum requirement in China (as well as in Vietnam in most cases) is per installment or per suitcase. For this example, I will use China only.

Just imagine this recent story on a Chinese corrupt official, Party Secretary of a city (NOT A PROVINCE), basically a mid-tier position. This guy is worth 30 billion pounds!!!

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7528217/13-5-tonnes-gold-worth-520-million-corrupt-Chinese-officials-home.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZhangQi(politician,_born_1961)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPTtqYZdEs0&ab_channel=OnDemandNews

Freaking Japanese billionaires on NIKEI 225 can't hold a candle to one of many mid-tier guys in the CCP. Taro Aso and Shinzo Abe are nothing more than water boys for this corrupt official alone.