[TODAY'S TOP STORIES] from [The Japan Times]
[NATIONAL NEWS]
Thursday, Dec. 3, 2009
Hatoyama's mom gave sons billions?
Despite 'loan' claim, gift tax question raised
Kyodo News
The political funds scandal involving Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and his mother has spread to his brother, Kunio, who also apparently received vast sums from her.
Sources said Wednesday that Kunio Hatoyama, a Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker who held Cabinet minister portfolios, received some of the \3.6 billion that was withdrawn from bank accounts registered in the name of his 87-year-old mother from 2003 to 2008.
Yukio Hatoyama, president of the Democratic Party of Japan, was reported to have received a total of \900 million over the five years to 2008 and some of the money may have been recorded as donations from fictitious donors in his political funds report.
Kunio Hatoyama is thought to have received about the same amount as the prime minister, and the latest findings suggest the total amount given to the Hatoyama brothers is likely to reach roughly \2 billion, according to the sources.
Other sources familiar with Yukio Hatoyama's accounting claimed, as reported earlier, that the money provided to him constituted "loans" and was thus not subject to the gift tax.
But unless legitimate loan documents are found, tax authorities could automatically recognize funds provided from a parent to a child as a "gift."
According to experts, the gift tax can range between 10 percent to 50 percent on amounts of \1.1 million or more received per year.
LDP executives are already claiming Yukio Hatoyama may have failed to pay hefty gift taxes for the funds reportedly transferred to him from his mother's bank account.
The funding for the two brothers apparently started after Yukio Hatoyama's former secretary, who was in charge of accounting for his political funds, requested around 2002 that donations be made from an organization involving Hatoyama's mother, the earlier sources said.
Kunio Hatoyama's office declined comment on the allegation.
It was separately reported that prosecutors at present are leaning toward not questioning the prime minister over the irregularities in his political funding reports.
The Tokyo District Public Prosecutor's Office instead intends to ask Hatoyama, who has denied involvement in any funds misuse, to give a full accounting of the case in a written statement, the sources said. Prosecutors feel the statement is necessary because a complaint has been filed against the prime minister and because he is obliged to select and oversee his chief accountant.
They suspect that more than \300 million may have been falsely declared in Hatoyama's fundraising reports and that his mother may have been the source of some of the funds.
The prosecutors have apparently also decided not to question the mother, because the investigation has yet to provide sufficient evidence that would stick against her pertaining to illegal contributions, the sources said.
DPJ officials said Tuesday that the mother, Yasuko, the elder daughter of the founder of Bridgestone Tire Co., will be hospitalized Wednesday for eye treatment.
[NATIONAL NEWS]
Thursday, Dec. 3, 2009
Child custody division set up
Treaty studied on protecting kids when international marriages fail
By MINORU MATSUTANI
Staff writer
The Foreign Ministry has set up a new division to handle international child custody issues in response to overseas criticism that Japan allows Japanese mothers to take their children away from their divorced partners.
The division, officially launched Tuesday, will study the issue, including whether to sign the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, whose aim is to secure the prompt return of children wrongfully removed to or retained in any signatory countries, Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada said.
"We have received various opinions from America and European nations. This is a difficult issue, but we will try to take quick action to handle it," Okada told reporters Monday.
Foreign embassies and governments have urged Japan to improve the situations for foreign men trying to see their children, but such diplomatic efforts have not been successful.
Before the establishment of the Division for Issues Related to Child Custody, which has nine ministry officials, the issue was handled by several different departments, including the North America Bureau, the West Europe Bureau and the International Legal Affairs Bureau, division official Takuya Akiyama said. The new division will now be the main body in the ministry handling the child custody issues, he said.
However, signing the Hague Convention is just a small step forward on a long journey toward solving child abduction issues involving international couples. The government would also have to change the Civil Code to allow both parents to have parental rights after divorce, lawyers said.
As currently stipulated in the Civil Code only one of the parents would have parental rights after a divorce.
The Civil Code revision issue would need a decision by the government as a whole, not solely the Foreign Ministry's, experts say.
Japanese courts usually rule in favor of Japanese mothers, who typically want full custody of their children, even if they forcefully take their children away from their ex-husbands.
Some Japanese mothers have taken their children without permission to Japan from their country of residence after international divorces, violating custody rulings overseas. Japanese media have reported that some have suffered from domestic violence or faced other family problems.
Divorced fathers in Japan are rarely granted visitation rights, or at best are granted minimal visitation rights.
Traditionally in Japan, visits by an ex-spouse are considered to adversely affect the family environment for children, and it is also believed that women are better suited to rear children mainly because they stay home longer than men, lawyers say.
Also on Tuesday, officials of the Foreign Ministry, including the chief of the new division, as well as West Europe Bureau officials, discussed with French diplomats the issue of child abductions by Japanese women from their French ex-husbands.
There are 35 such cases, according to Okada and Akiyama. Last month, 22 U.S. senators said there are 79 cases involving 100 American children who have been abducted by a parent to Japan.
[NATIONAL NEWS]
Thursday, Dec. 3, 2009
Ichihashi gets warrant for Hawker rape-murder
CHIBA (Kyodo) Tatsuya Ichihashi was served a fresh arrest warrant Wednesday on suspicion of raping and killing Briton Lindsay Ann Hawker, after being charged earlier in the day with abandoning her body.
The 30-year-old was arrested on Nov. 10 in Osaka following more than 2 1/2 years on the run since Hawker was found strangled and stuffed in a tub on the balcony of his apartment in Ichikawa, Chiba Prefecture, in 2007.
Although Ichihashi has remained silent about the murder, the police believe he killed the 22-year-old language teacher and the murder warrant was so served on the last day of his detention period authorized under the initial arrest on the technical offense of abandoning a corpse.
Ichihashi went to his apartment with Hawker and was there when the police called on him on March 26, 2007, according to investigators. He then fled from officers at the scene, and they subsequently found Hawker's body inside the sand-filled bathtub.
During his 32 months on the run, Ichihashi used a false name to work at different construction firms and altered his face by plastic surgery.
One of the clinics that conducted surgery on Ichihashi tipped off the police and provided a photograph of his postsurgery face, which was then widely published and broadcast.
Shortly after the picture was released, Ichihashi was spotted at a ferry terminal in Osaka while waiting for a ship bound for Okinawa and was arrested by police after they received a call from the ferry operator.
Chiba police followed their usual procedure in first arresting him on technical charges and serving another warrant to extend the period of detention in order to question him on the main charge of murder, for which he has refused to speak.
On the day of Ichihashi's arrest, Bill Hawker, the father of the murdered woman, said his family had "got justice" and hoped he would admit to what he had done.
[NATIONAL NEWS]
Thursday, Dec. 3, 2009
Hatoyama's mom gave sons billions?
Despite 'loan' claim, gift tax question raised
Kyodo News
The political funds scandal involving Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and his mother has spread to his brother, Kunio, who also apparently received vast sums from her.
Sources said Wednesday that Kunio Hatoyama, a Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker who held Cabinet minister portfolios, received some of the \3.6 billion that was withdrawn from bank accounts registered in the name of his 87-year-old mother from 2003 to 2008.
Yukio Hatoyama, president of the Democratic Party of Japan, was reported to have received a total of \900 million over the five years to 2008 and some of the money may have been recorded as donations from fictitious donors in his political funds report.
Kunio Hatoyama is thought to have received about the same amount as the prime minister, and the latest findings suggest the total amount given to the Hatoyama brothers is likely to reach roughly \2 billion, according to the sources.
Other sources familiar with Yukio Hatoyama's accounting claimed, as reported earlier, that the money provided to him constituted "loans" and was thus not subject to the gift tax.
But unless legitimate loan documents are found, tax authorities could automatically recognize funds provided from a parent to a child as a "gift."
According to experts, the gift tax can range between 10 percent to 50 percent on amounts of \1.1 million or more received per year.
LDP executives are already claiming Yukio Hatoyama may have failed to pay hefty gift taxes for the funds reportedly transferred to him from his mother's bank account.
The funding for the two brothers apparently started after Yukio Hatoyama's former secretary, who was in charge of accounting for his political funds, requested around 2002 that donations be made from an organization involving Hatoyama's mother, the earlier sources said.
Kunio Hatoyama's office declined comment on the allegation.
It was separately reported that prosecutors at present are leaning toward not questioning the prime minister over the irregularities in his political funding reports.
The Tokyo District Public Prosecutor's Office instead intends to ask Hatoyama, who has denied involvement in any funds misuse, to give a full accounting of the case in a written statement, the sources said. Prosecutors feel the statement is necessary because a complaint has been filed against the prime minister and because he is obliged to select and oversee his chief accountant.
They suspect that more than \300 million may have been falsely declared in Hatoyama's fundraising reports and that his mother may have been the source of some of the funds.
The prosecutors have apparently also decided not to question the mother, because the investigation has yet to provide sufficient evidence that would stick against her pertaining to illegal contributions, the sources said.
DPJ officials said Tuesday that the mother, Yasuko, the elder daughter of the founder of Bridgestone Tire Co., will be hospitalized Wednesday for eye treatment.
[NATIONAL NEWS]
Thursday, Dec. 3, 2009
Child custody division set up
Treaty studied on protecting kids when international marriages fail
By MINORU MATSUTANI
Staff writer
The Foreign Ministry has set up a new division to handle international child custody issues in response to overseas criticism that Japan allows Japanese mothers to take their children away from their divorced partners.
The division, officially launched Tuesday, will study the issue, including whether to sign the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, whose aim is to secure the prompt return of children wrongfully removed to or retained in any signatory countries, Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada said.
"We have received various opinions from America and European nations. This is a difficult issue, but we will try to take quick action to handle it," Okada told reporters Monday.
Foreign embassies and governments have urged Japan to improve the situations for foreign men trying to see their children, but such diplomatic efforts have not been successful.
Before the establishment of the Division for Issues Related to Child Custody, which has nine ministry officials, the issue was handled by several different departments, including the North America Bureau, the West Europe Bureau and the International Legal Affairs Bureau, division official Takuya Akiyama said. The new division will now be the main body in the ministry handling the child custody issues, he said.
However, signing the Hague Convention is just a small step forward on a long journey toward solving child abduction issues involving international couples. The government would also have to change the Civil Code to allow both parents to have parental rights after divorce, lawyers said.
As currently stipulated in the Civil Code only one of the parents would have parental rights after a divorce.
The Civil Code revision issue would need a decision by the government as a whole, not solely the Foreign Ministry's, experts say.
Japanese courts usually rule in favor of Japanese mothers, who typically want full custody of their children, even if they forcefully take their children away from their ex-husbands.
Some Japanese mothers have taken their children without permission to Japan from their country of residence after international divorces, violating custody rulings overseas. Japanese media have reported that some have suffered from domestic violence or faced other family problems.
Divorced fathers in Japan are rarely granted visitation rights, or at best are granted minimal visitation rights.
Traditionally in Japan, visits by an ex-spouse are considered to adversely affect the family environment for children, and it is also believed that women are better suited to rear children mainly because they stay home longer than men, lawyers say.
Also on Tuesday, officials of the Foreign Ministry, including the chief of the new division, as well as West Europe Bureau officials, discussed with French diplomats the issue of child abductions by Japanese women from their French ex-husbands.
There are 35 such cases, according to Okada and Akiyama. Last month, 22 U.S. senators said there are 79 cases involving 100 American children who have been abducted by a parent to Japan.
[NATIONAL NEWS]
Thursday, Dec. 3, 2009
Ichihashi gets warrant for Hawker rape-murder
CHIBA (Kyodo) Tatsuya Ichihashi was served a fresh arrest warrant Wednesday on suspicion of raping and killing Briton Lindsay Ann Hawker, after being charged earlier in the day with abandoning her body.
The 30-year-old was arrested on Nov. 10 in Osaka following more than 2 1/2 years on the run since Hawker was found strangled and stuffed in a tub on the balcony of his apartment in Ichikawa, Chiba Prefecture, in 2007.
Although Ichihashi has remained silent about the murder, the police believe he killed the 22-year-old language teacher and the murder warrant was so served on the last day of his detention period authorized under the initial arrest on the technical offense of abandoning a corpse.
Ichihashi went to his apartment with Hawker and was there when the police called on him on March 26, 2007, according to investigators. He then fled from officers at the scene, and they subsequently found Hawker's body inside the sand-filled bathtub.
During his 32 months on the run, Ichihashi used a false name to work at different construction firms and altered his face by plastic surgery.
One of the clinics that conducted surgery on Ichihashi tipped off the police and provided a photograph of his postsurgery face, which was then widely published and broadcast.
Shortly after the picture was released, Ichihashi was spotted at a ferry terminal in Osaka while waiting for a ship bound for Okinawa and was arrested by police after they received a call from the ferry operator.
Chiba police followed their usual procedure in first arresting him on technical charges and serving another warrant to extend the period of detention in order to question him on the main charge of murder, for which he has refused to speak.
On the day of Ichihashi's arrest, Bill Hawker, the father of the murdered woman, said his family had "got justice" and hoped he would admit to what he had done.
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