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Yomiuri Shimbun file photo The Defense Ministry head office in Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo
The Yomiuri Shimbun
20:00 JST, July 30, 2024
Defense Minister Minoru Kihara said Tuesday that he would be informed of any arrests in the ministry and would make the arrests public as soon as possible, in response to a series of scandals involving the defense authorities.
The House of Representatives’ National Security Committee on the day examined the scandals while the Diet was not in session. In one case, the Maritime Self-Defense Force’s Criminal Investigation Command arrested four of the MSDF divers who fraudulently received special allowances, but their arrests were not made public.
“We will improve the current system so that all arrests made by the Criminal Investigation Command are reported to the defense minister, and we will make the arrests public as soon as possible,” Kihara said at the examination.
The investigation squad detained the divers in November, but their arrest was not announced at that time. It was not disclosed even when the Maritime Staff Office and the ministry’s Bureau of Personnel & Education disclosed the series of scandals to the public on July 12.
“The fact that there were arrests was shared between the MSDF and the personnel bureau, but the bureau failed to make an appropriate judgment and did not report it to me,” Kihara said.
He said that there was “no intention to cover up the facts,” but that the bureau failed to understand that it should file a report.
Asked about the delay in reporting, Kihara said, “There was a problem from the perspective of civilian control.”
When the personnel bureau did eventually file a report with Kihara on July 5 on the disciplinary action taken for the scandals, annotations on the documents noted the arrests, but there was no verbal explanation of the matter.
“I was not aware of the arrests when [the misconduct] was explained to me, and I’m partly responsible for that,” Kihara said.
He also denied he would resign. “I have been instructed by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to take the lead in rebuilding the organization,” he said.
As to the MSDF’s mishandling of classified security information, Kihara said, “We will introduce a comprehensive information security system by stages.”
A similar examination was held at the House of Councillors Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defense in the afternoon.
The upper house also held a meeting of its Board of Oversight and Review of Specially Designated Secrets, which submitted to chamber President Hidehisa Otsuji a request for the defense minister to improve the ministry’s information security system.
