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- <text id=89TT0743>
- <title>
- Mar. 20, 1989: Business Notes:Japan
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989
- Mar. 20, 1989 Solving The Mysteries Of Heredity
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- BUSINESS, Page 58
- Business Notes
- JAPAN
- The Scandal Will Not Die
- </hdr><body>
- <p> Three dark-suited men jumped from a car outside a Tokyo
- hospital last week and disappeared into the building. When they
- emerged, district prosecutors had arrested silver-haired
- Hisashi Shinto, 78, the powerful former chairman of Nippon
- Telegraph & Telephone. Within days, Takashi Kato, a former Vice
- Minister of Labor, was also taken into custody by authorities.
- </p>
- <p> The detentions marked a fresh turn in the Recruit scandal,
- the spreading stock-for-influence deal that has already claimed
- three Cabinet ministers in the government of Prime Minister
- Noboru Takeshita. Shinto stands accused of taking $70,000 in
- bribes in the form of stock profits from heavily discounted
- shares of a Recruit Co. subsidiary. In return, the former NTT
- boss allegedly helped the fast-growing
- employment-and-communications firm break into the
- telecommunications business.
- </p>
- <p> The Recruit affair has put intense pressure on the
- Takeshita government, whose popularity is at a record low of 21%
- in the polls. Opposition parties have called for the Prime
- Minister to resign unless he acts soon to clear up the scandal.
- Says one pundit: "Takeshita is in a real fix."
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
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