Japan: Japan to Launch Harmonisation on Organised Crime Provisions — Too Late and Too Little?
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb025809 |
| Pages | 373-374 |
| Date | 01 February 1997 |
| Published date | 01 February 1997 |
| Author | Hiroshi Goto |
| Subject Matter | Accounting & finance |
Journal of Financial Crime — Vol. 4 No. 4 — International
Japan:
Japan to Launch Harmonisation on
Organised Crime Provisions — Too Late and Too
Little?
Hiroshi Goto
Despite the trend in many countries in their atti-
tudes to fill in the pitfalls in their anti-organised-
crime legislatures by broadening its scope,
especially in money-laundering provisions, there
have been, quite surprisingly, no legislative efforts
made in Japan to follow such a trend. However,
Japan appears to try to combat organised crime in
the same way as others in the wake of borderless
and diversified activities of organised crime and in
the need for international cooperation in investiga-
tions.
On 6th October, 1996, Yomiuri Shimbun, the
most widely circulated newspaper in Japan,
reported that the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) is now
planning to make a major refurbishment to the
criminal law provisions so that the authorities can
crack down on organised crime far more effect-
ively, especially taking into account the feasibility
of international cooperation.
In the new legislation, organised crime is to be
defined as the 'creation of an organisation or
organisations for the purpose of committing
various criminal offences' or offences 'committed
to gain illegal benefits for any organisation'. Based
on these criteria, the new legislative measures to
combat organised crime are fourfold: first, to
stiffen the punishment for those offences which
are likely to be committed under the above notion
of organised crime, such as murder, kidnap, extor-
tion and fraud; secondly, to broaden the provision
for the offence of money laundering, which cur-
rently applies only if it is related to proceeds of
illegal drug sales under special legislation; thirdly,
to broaden confiscatability of assets derived from
or used in organised crime which enable the
authority to confiscate intangible assets and assets
in a third party's hand if they are knowingly
received as 'dirty' assets; finally, to improve
investigatory powers to allow police to tap tele-
phones and bug conversations of those potentially
involved in serious crime subject to the submis-
sion of the court to that effect.
Japan has been working on this area of crime
with a rather different approach. This may be
mainly because in Japan such crime, categorised as
'organised crime', was traditionally in most cases
committed by the indigenous gangsters working in
a form of organisation, and the Government had
for a long time made an attempt to discourage the
activities of these gangsters including the latest
attempt to disband these organisations by enacting
the Anti-yakuza Law in 1992. As for the money
laundering legislation, the first provision was intro-
duced by enactment of the Special Law in regard
to Drugs Control Laws in 1992 after Japan ratified
the UN Convention against Illicit Traffic in Nar-
cotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances in the
same year.
However, these measures turned out to be
unsatisfactory when the authority was faced with
difficulties in its attempt to confiscate the property
owned by the cult group Aum
Supreme
Truth which
they had used as nerve gas plants after the series of
terrorist acts the group had conspired in, including
the nerve gas attack in March 1995. Moreover,
Japan is still far behind any other country in the
means available for information gathering on
organised crime due to lack of provisions for tele-
phone tapping or sting operations. It has been said
that this prevented the police from arresting, for
example, the criminal who actually initiated and
ordered the murder of the director of Fuji Film
Co.
in 1994. Another embarrassment, reported in
the papers was that, despite the borderless activities
of organised criminals in these days, Japan had
scarcely provided any related information while
other countries have provided Japan with highly
credible and useful information.
In these circumstances, the MoJ's Legislative
Council has started working on this issue since
May of this year. Although this movement by the
Government has been welcomed, many commen-
tators complain about it as 'too late'. Not only that,
but these new provisions will hardly enable Japan
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