Tanaka colleague held in Lockheed case
NZPA-Reuter Tokyo The Tokyo District Prosecutor’s Office said on Saturday that it had detained former Transport Minister, Tomisaburo Hashimoto, on suspicion of receiving a bribe in the Lockheed pay-off scandal.
Mr Hashimoto, aged 75, is the third top conservative politician to be detained or charged in connection with the affair, in which the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation has admitted paying out millions of dollars to further the sale of its planes in Japan.
The prosecuter’s office announcement said Mr Hashimoto was suspected of agreeing to a request to postpone the introduction of wide-bodied jets into service with Japanese airlines until AH Nippon Airways was in
a position to purchase such planes. He was suspected of receiving five million yen (about sAustl3,soo) from A.N.A. through officials of the Marubeni Corporation, the Lockheed agent in Japan, in return for doing this, the announcement said.
Mr Hashimoto was Transport Minister from January, 1970, to July, 1971, and sec-retary-general of the ruling Liberal-Democratic Party from July, 1971, to December, 1974, during the period Mr Kakuei Tanaka was Prime Minister.
Mr Hashimoto, a member of the faction within the party headed by Mr Tanaka until the latter resigned from the party nearly three weeks ago, is a senior advisor in the party and a member of the lower house
of the Diet (Parliament). Efforts from within, the party to depose the present Prime Minister (Mr Mikl), who has insisted that the Lockheed affair must be cleared up, are reaching a peak. More than two-thirds of the 393 L.D.P. members of both houses of the Diet have called for a general conference in which Mr Mikl could be voted from power. A total of 262 votes would be needed to depose Mr Miki. But political observers noted that not all those who voted for the general conference would necessarily vote against the Prime Minister in a showdown.
Mr Miki was yesterday meeting his chief rival within the party, the Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Takeo Fukuda.
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Press, 23 August 1976, Page 6
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334Tanaka colleague held in Lockheed case Press, 23 August 1976, Page 6
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