Labels:text | electronics | camera | cameras & optics | screenshot | lens | camera lens OCR: INSIGHT ing so much money, it must have seemed natural ars later after tax agents found the bonds in to keep some for himself. Yet that presented a pro- Kanemaru's safe. blem. He couldn't simply put it in a bank. After being audited and fined once in 1980, The Jailed Kanemaru knew Japanese tax authorities were After more than three weeks in a tiny cell ruthless. Whenever he was handed cash from a eating barley rice, Kanemaru was freed company at his office, he was forced to either on US$2.5 million bail in March 1993. In stash it in a secret vault or take it home and hide it April, the LDP endorsed a US$120 billion pump- in a drawer. priming package, the largest in Japanese history. After consulting a crony, Kanemaru turned to Public works spending will amount to some US$96 discount bank debentures. The bonds, issued with billion. If the Don had not been caught, the stand- a fixed interest rate at a price reduced from their ard kickback of up to 3 per cent of each project's face value, yield their full amount at maturity. The contract value meant that he would possibly have bonds' main advantage: They could be purchased reaped a whopping US$2.9 billion in graft anonymously On two occasions, in 1986 and 1989, A source close to the Justice Ministry confi- Kanemaru had his wife Etsuko buy debentures dently predicts, "He will be tried and convicted." But in US$7.2 million will he be punished? Japan's notoriously slow THE CAMERA chunks at broker- courts may take five years or more before a sen- age firm Okasan Securities Co. tence is passed. By then, the Don will be in his 80s. Since he suffers from diabetes, some suspect That was to that he will never have to serve time. prove fatal. The Two things are for certain, though. First, Ka- purchases ulti- nemaru's days as kingmaker are over And second, mately led to his you cannot watch your favourite volleyball team arrest seven ye- in jail.
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