Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Efforts to Represent Tepco's New Chairman as a Hero


Dealing with the Yazuka Prepared Tepco's Chairman for Japan's Nuclear Disaster. Business Insider http://www.businessinsider.com/katsuhiko-shimokobe-and-tepco-2012-10

[Excerpted] In Japan, organized crime groups known as the Yakuza are still extremely prominent, compared to the United States or Europe. Most recently, they may have been connected to the Olympus accounting scandal. They have widespread connections in business and politics that often prevent real action. 
 
According to the FT, Shimokobe went up against the largest of the groups, the Yamaguchi-Gumi, which controls nearly half of the 75,000 estimated Yakuza members. For two years he worked with the Tokyo District Public Prosecutor's Office as the administrator of the reimbursement fund for victims of the Goryo Kai scandal, where thousands of people were manipulated into illegal high interest debt by loans sharks affiliated with the group....



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/katsuhiko-shimokobe-and-tepco-2012-10#ixzz2AnZhGr7N


Majia here: This article was originally published in the British Financial Times.


Yesterday, I cited an article from the Wall Street Journal describing competition over Britain's bid to build more nuclear plants http://majiasblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/hitachi-bids-to-acquire-british-nuclear.html

S. Williams (2012, October 29). Hitachi Set to Win Bidding for British Nuclear Venture. The Wall Street Journal, p. B3

Paraphrasing: Hitachi has joined with Canadian SNC-Lavalin Group to bid for RWE AG and E. ON AG.

Excerpt: "The deal is also vital for the UK government, which has put nuclear energy at the center of its energy policy"

Majia here: Somehow today's FT article describing Tepco's new chairman as a hero capable of confronting corruption seems propagandistic when viewed in relation to Britain's decision to put nuclear "at the center of its energy policy."




1 comment:

  1. That's funny, as Tokyo Electric is the Yakuza. There are some big fights at the moment over which branch of Yakuza get more power, and the branch that Koizumi is affiliated with has the usual CIA types all over it, while this branch is a bit more of an old-school, Korean/Japanese entity.

    -Ozawa

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