Mobster arrested in Fukushima clean-up
2013-02-01 14:57
Tokyo - Japanese police have arrested a high-ranking
yakuza over claims he sent workers to Fukushima for the radiological clean-up
without a licence, the first arrest of a mobster in connection with the nuclear
plant.
Officers in northern Yamagata prefecture were quizzing
Yoshinori Arai, a 40-year-old senior member of a local yakuza group affiliated
to the Sumiyoshi-kai crime syndicate, a police spokesperson said on Thursday.
Arai allegedly dispatched three men to Fukushima to work
on clean-up crews in November last year, he said.
Under Japanese law, a government licence is required by
anyone who acts as an employment agent.
Arai is also suspected of sending people to work on the
construction of temporary housing in the tsunami-hit northeast, the spokesperson
said.
Arai reportedly told police that he intended to profit
from the scheme by taking a cut of the workers' wages.
Those employed at Fukushima earn more than others in
similar work because of the potentially hazardous nature of the job.
It was the first arrest of a mobster linked to Fukushima
clean-up, the police spokesperson said.
A Japanese journalist who worked at the crippled nuclear
plant months after the accident in March 2011 has claimed that Japan's yakuza
are involved in supplying clean-up crews.
The journalist, Tomohiko Suzuki, told AFP the crime
groups have long sent debtors to nuclear power plants as a way of paying off
loans made at sky-high rates.
Like the Italian mafia or Chinese triads, the yakuza has
engaged in activities from gambling, drugs and prostitution to loan sharking,
protection rackets, white-collar crime and business conducted through front
companies.
The gangs, which are not illegal, have historically been
tolerated by the authorities, although there are periodic clampdowns on some of
their less savoury activities.
