Tokyo, Feb 7: A bribery scandal which has engulfed Japan's powerful ministry of finance and led to the arrest of two elite bureaucrats may also have touched the nation's central bank, Japanese media said on Saturday.The mass circulation Yomiuri Shimbun reported Saturday that internal audits carried out by a number of major Japanese banks reveal that senior Bank of Japan (BoJ) officials have been wined and dined to the tune of millions of yen (tens of thousands of dollars) by those banks over the past five years.
Two central bankers alone were said to have accepted bribes of more than four million yen in the form of lavish entertainment at restaurants and golf courses, the paper added.
A majority of the Bank of Japan officials involved were those in charge of allocating funds to banks for their daily operations, the Yomiuri said. The Bank of Japan could not immediately be reached for comment.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
