The U.S. Department of Treasury on Wednesday announced sanctions against Japan’s third-largest crime syndicate the Inagawa-kai and its leaders.
Roughly one in five Japanese companies shaken down by the yakuza ended up paying them off, according to a study released by Japan’s National Police Agency.
Tadamasa Goto, former boss of the Yamaguchi-gumi Goto-gumi crime group, has agreed to pay ¥110 million, or $1.4 million, to settle the lawsuit filed by the family of Kazuoki Nozaki, who was murdered by members of the organization in 2006.
These days the price of a standard civilian hit-job can run as high as $2 million. That’s not the price to get the job done―that’s the price if one of your underlings gets caught. The whole inflationary spiral started with one dumb yakuza stiffing McDonald’s on the price of a cheeseburger in Kyoto a few years ago.
Japan's national Diet approved the revisions of the Organized Crime Group Countermeasures Law (改正暴力団対策法) last Thursday which allows police to designate organized crime groups as “extremely dangerous” and then arrest any member of that group, without issuing a cease and desist order, if he (or she), makes unreasonable or illegal demands towards ordinary citizens.
After the arrest of a yakuza boss for his alleged role in supplying workers to TEPCO’s Fukushima Daichi Nuclear Plant, we are learning the details of how Japan’s nuclear industry relied on organized crime.
In the first arrest in relation to the yakuza's role in Japan's nuclear industry since last March's devastating earthquake and tsunami, police in Fukushima charged a senior yakuza leader for illegally dispatching workers to the reconstruction at the TEPCO-run Fukushima Daichi Nuclear Power Plant.
TOKYO -- The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which had been a bastion of cronyism and corruption even before the triple meltdown at its Fukushima Daichii nuclear power following the March 11 earthquake, has today begun the process of being nationalized by the Japanese government.
In an assertive but unsurprising move, the Obama administration threw a road block between Wall Street and some of the world's most prominent organized crime gangs, including a yakuza godfather and his deputy.
"TEPCO's involvement with anti-social forces and their inability to filter them out of the work-place is a national security issue," a Japanese Senator with the Liberal Democratic Party said on background.
Today, on October 1, new laws make all of Japan a lot less friendly for organized crime
Following Shinsuke Shimada's retirement, the star's crime links are being unraveled
How a fallen yakuza boss took down TV host Shinsuke Shimada, the Jay Leno of Japan
The Japanese criminal underworld courts local governments for lucrative contracts
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