The Prosecution Dropped the Alleged Case:

“Embezzlement of the International Exchanging Fund”

 

1. According to the announcement by the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors’ Office yesterday, it decided to waive an indictment on 28 Dec. 2007 against Akira Matsuzaki, a former president of JREU due to insufficient evidence. Regarding the case, criminal papers had been filed with prosecutors against him on suspicion of embezzlement. Therefore all the suspects including other three whose case had been already dropped were exempted from prosecution. The “investigation” concerning this case has all finished. The case has reached the righteous conclusion. 

 

2. The Public Safety Bureau Division 2 of the MPD re-seized 22 items of all the goods confiscated up to then in the site of the MPD and launched criminal investigation into the case on 15 March 2005, the day before the prosecutors dropped the “Tokyo Station case”. The Police raided 24 locations including the office of JRU for four consecutive days starting on 7 Dec. 2007 and seized a total of 2197 (according to the list of confiscated goods made by the MPD) union property such as all the accounting data and all the documents and minutes of union congresses and central committee meetings since the foundation of JRU. Since then a full investigation was conducted to check up deposit account record of Mr. Matsuzaki and related organizations and individuals by dispatching investigators as far as Okinawa and Hawaii to make reference to financial institutions. However, their “struggle” resulted in non-indictment because of insufficient evidence. As JRU has kept claiming from the beginning, the fact that “There is no crime because Mr. Matsuzaki received a part of his own money that was temporarily deposited in the account.” was completely proven.  

 

3. To look back on, the Public Safety Bureau Division 2 has conducted a series of investigation starting with arrest of seven workers of JR Urawa Electric Train Depot in November 2002, followed by the Tokyo Station case (suspicion of Violation of the Law on Punishment against Violent and Other Acts, 2003-2005), the Flier Distribution case (suspicion of Trespass, 2003-2004), the latest case of Embezzlement of the International Exchange Fund dropped on 28 Dec. 2007 (suspicion of Embezzlement, 2005-2007) and the Japan Railway Welfare Association case (suspicion of Embezzlement, 2007~). In addition, total number of “criminal investigation” carried out to crack down JRU is six in a brief span of over five years including the Gamagoori Station case (suspicion of Theft, 2007~) by the security police of the Aichi Prefectural Police Department. In this series of investigation of the cases which had different suspicions respectively, suspects totaled 29, arrestees were 7, a total term of detention was 2408 days, domiciliary searches were carried out at 180 locations and items confiscated totaled 5738. Of all these cases, three including the latest case were dropped and the statute of limitations of the remaining one has already run out.

 

4. It is out of ordinary that criminal investigation has been focused on a single labor union so intensively and furthermore cases have been dropped by the prosecution one after another. What has backed this abnormal crackdown is the reputation of “the far-left group KAKUMARU’s infiltration into JRU”. In 1997, based on the groundless presumption, the Public Safety Bureau of the MPD launched spreading this assertion, which was followed by publicity in the public relations magazine of the National Police Agency, explanations repeated by the successive high-ranked police officers in the Diet and responsive pleading by the Cabinet. It was also used for persisting coverage in a weekly magazine by the reporter who was supplied with highly-secret investigation documents from the MPD. The KOKURO and the Japan Railway Trade Unions Confederation have joined the campaign. Nevertheless, the definite grounds have never been clarified.   

 

5. No one is more obstructive for the governments that are promoting market competition-oriented neo-liberal reform than a self-organized labor union which plays an active part with its own concept of values of peace and safety, depending neither on companies nor on the government. Therefore the security police continued to cook up alleged crimes based by information manipulation such as “JRU is a dangerous union penetrated by extremists”, and repeated crackdown on us.    

 

6, The latest non-indictment can be said as one of the achievement of our counter offensive advanced together with many sane people. We are determined to devote ourselves wholeheartedly to win an acquittal reversing a lower court’s judgment in the High-Court trial of JR Urawa Electric Train Depot case, enhancing solidarity among workers and citizens. We also do our best to contain the dangerous move which excludes individuals and organizations that are not favored by the government. 

 

8 January, 2008

 

Japan Confederation of Railway Workers’ Unions (JRU)