Alex
2008-05-14 06:14:32 UTC
Il testo e' in inglese ma e' molto interessante, e' stato pubblicato dal
Washington Post online, il titolo e':
This Mob Is Big in Japan.
Per leggere l' articolo sul sito del WP bisogna registrarsi (gratis):
http://www.washingtonpost.com
By Jake Adelstein
Sunday, May 11, 2008
I have spent most of the past 15 years in the dark side of the rising sun.
Until three years ago, I was a crime reporter for the Yomiuri Shimbun,
Japan's largest newspaper, and covered a roster of characters that included
serial killers who doubled as pet breeders, child pornographers who abducted
junior high-school girls, and the John Gotti of Japan.
I came to Japan in 1988 at age 19, spent most of college living in a Zen
Buddhist temple, and then became the first U.S. citizen hired as a regular
staff writer for a Japanese newspaper in Japanese. If you know anything
about Japan, you'll realize how bizarre this is -- a gaijin, or foreigner,
covering Japanese cops. When I started the beat in the early 1990s, I knew
nothing about the yakuza, a.k.a. the Japanese mafia. But following their
prostitution rings and extortion rackets became my life.
Most Americans think of Japan as a law-abiding and peaceful place, as well
as our staunch ally, but reporting on the underworld gave me a different
perspective. Mobs are legal entities here. Their fan magazines and comic
books are sold in convenience stores, and bosses socialize with prime
ministers and politicians. And as far as the United States is concerned,
Japan may be refueling U.S. warships at sea, but it's not helping us fight
our own battles against organized crime -- a realization that led to my
biggest scoop.
I loved my job. The cops fighting organized crime are hard-drinking
iconoclasts -- many look like their mobster foes, with their black suits and
slicked-back hair. They're outsiders in Japanese society, and perhaps
because I was an outsider too, we got along well. The yakuza's tribal
features are also compelling, like those of an alien life form: the
full-body tattoos, missing digits and pseudo-family structure. I became so
fascinated that, like someone staring at a wild animal, I got too close and
now am worried for my life. But more on that later.
The Japanese National Police Agency (NPA) estimates that the yakuza have
almost 80,000 members. The most powerful faction, the Yamaguchi-gumi, is
known as "the Wal-Mart of the yakuza" and reportedly has close to 40,000
members. In Tokyo alone, the police have identified more than 800 yakuza
front companies: investment and auditing firms, construction companies and
pastry shops. The mobsters even set up their own bank in California,
according to underworld sources.
Over the last seven years, the yakuza have moved into finance. Japan's
Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission has an index of more than 50
listed companies with ties to organized crime. The market is so infested
that Osaka Securities Exchange officials decided in March that they would
review all listed companies and expel those found to have links with the
yakuza. If you think this has nothing to do with the United States, think
again. Americans have billions of dollars in the Japanese stock market. So
U.S. investors could be funding the Japanese mob.
I once asked a detective from Osaka why, if Japanese law enforcement knows
so much about the yakuza, the police don't just take them down. "We don't
have a RICO Act," he explained. "We don't have plea-bargaining, a
witness-protection program or witness-relocation program. So what we end up
doing most of the time is just clipping the branches. . . . If the
government would give us the tools, we'd shut them down, but we don't have
'em."
In the good old days, the yakuza made most of their money from sleaze:
prostitution, drugs, protection money and child pornography. Kiddie porn is
still part of their base income -- and another area where Japan isn't acting
like America's friend.
In 1999, my editors assigned me to cover the Tokyo neighborhood that
includes Kabukicho, Japan's largest red-light district. Japan had recently
outlawed child pornography -- reluctantly, after international pressure left
officials no choice. But the ban, which is still in effect, had a major
flaw: It criminalized producing and selling child pornography, not owning
it. So the big-money industry goes on, unabated. Last month's issue of a
widely available porn magazine proclaimed, "Our Cover Girl Is Our Youngest
Yet: 14!" Kabukicho remains loaded with the stuff, and teenage sex workers
are readily available. I've even seen specialty stores that sell the
underwear worn by teenage strippers.
The ban is so weak that investigating yakuza who peddle child pornography is
practically impossible. "The United States has referred hundreds of . . .
cases to Japanese law enforcement authorities," a U.S. embassy spokesman
recently told me. "Without exception, U.S. officials have been told that the
Japanese police cannot open an investigation because possession is legal."
In 2007, the Internet Hotline Center in Japan identified more than 500 local
sites displaying child pornography.
There's talk in Japan of criminalizing simple possession, but some political
parties (and publishers, who are raking in millions) oppose the idea. U.S.
law enforcement officers want to stop the flow of yakuza-produced child porn
into the United States and would support such a law. But they can't even
keep the yakuza themselves out of the country. Why? Because the national
police refuse to share intelligence. Last year, a former FBI agent told me
that, in a decade of conferences, the NPA had turned over the names and
birthdates of about 50 yakuza members. "Fifty out of 80,000," he said.
This lack of cooperation was partly responsible for an astonishing deal made
with the yakuza, and for the story that changed my life. On May 18, 2001,
the FBI arranged for Tadamasa Goto -- a notorious Japanese gang boss, the
one that some federal agents call the "John Gotti of Japan" -- to be flown
to the United States for a liver transplant.
Goto is alive today because of that operation -- a source of resentment
among Japanese law enforcement officials because the FBI organized it
without consulting them. From the U.S. point of view, it was a necessary
evil. The FBI had long suspected the yakuza of laundering money in the
United States, and Japanese and U.S. law enforcement officials confirm that
Goto offered to tip them off to Yamaguchi-gumi front companies and mobsters
in exchange for the transplant. James Moynihan, then the FBI representative
in Tokyo who brokered the deal, still defends the operation. "You can't
monitor the activities of the yakuza in the United States if you don't know
who they are," he said in 2007. "Goto only gave us a fraction of what he
promised, but it was better than nothing."
The suspicions about the Yamaguchi-gumi were confirmed in the fall of 2003,
when special agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), whom
I've interviewed, tracked down several million dollars deposited in U.S.
casino accounts and banks by Susumu Kajiyama, a boss known as "the Emperor
of Loan Sharks." The agents said they had not received a lead from the Tokyo
police; they got some of the information while looking back at the Goto
case.
Unlike their Japanese counterparts, U.S. law enforcement officers are
sharing tips with Japan. Officials from both countries confirm that, in
November 2003, the Tokyo police used information from ICE and the Nevada
Gaming Control Board to seize $2 million dollars in cash from a safe-deposit
box in Japan, which was leased to Kajiyama by a firm affiliated with a major
Las Vegas casino. According to ICE Special Agent Mike Cox, the Kajiyama saga
was probably not an isolated incident. "If we had some more information from
the Japan side," he told me last year, "I'm sure we'd find other cases like
it."
I'm not entirely objective on the issue of the yakuza in my adopted
homeland. Three years ago, Goto got word that I was reporting an article
about his liver transplant. A few days later, his underlings obliquely
threatened me. Then came a formal meeting. The offer was straightforward.
"Erase the story or be erased," one of them said. "Your family too."
I knew enough to take the threat seriously. So I took some advice from a
senior Japanese detective, abandoned the scoop and resigned from the Yomiuri
Shimbun two months later. But I never forgot the story. I planned to write
about it in a book, figuring that, with Goto's poor health, he'd be dead by
the time it came out. Otherwise, I planned to clip out the business of his
operation at the last minute.
I didn't bargain on the contents leaking out before my book was released,
which is what happened last November. Now the FBI and local law enforcement
are watching over my family in the States, while the Tokyo police and the
NPA look out for me in Japan. I would like to go home, but Goto has a
reputation for taking out his target and anyone else in the vicinity.
In early March, in my presence, an FBI agent asked the NPA to provide a list
of all the members of Goto's organization so that they could stop them from
coming into the country and killing my family. The NPA was reluctant at
first, citing "privacy concerns," but after much soul-searching handed over
about 50 names. But the Tokyo police file lists more than 900 members. I
know this because someone posted the file online in the summer of 2007; a
Japanese detective was fired because of the leak.
Of course, I'm a little biased. I don't think it's selfish of me to value
the safety of my family more than the personal privacy of crooks. And as a
crime reporter, I'm baffled that the Japanese don't share intelligence on
the yakuza with the United States.
Then again, perhaps I'm being unreasonable. Maybe some powerful Japanese are
simply ashamed of how strong the yakuza have become. And if they're not
ashamed, they should be.
Jake Adelstein is the author of the forthcoming "Tokyo Vice: An American
Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan."
Ciao
Alex
Washington Post online, il titolo e':
This Mob Is Big in Japan.
Per leggere l' articolo sul sito del WP bisogna registrarsi (gratis):
http://www.washingtonpost.com
By Jake Adelstein
Sunday, May 11, 2008
I have spent most of the past 15 years in the dark side of the rising sun.
Until three years ago, I was a crime reporter for the Yomiuri Shimbun,
Japan's largest newspaper, and covered a roster of characters that included
serial killers who doubled as pet breeders, child pornographers who abducted
junior high-school girls, and the John Gotti of Japan.
I came to Japan in 1988 at age 19, spent most of college living in a Zen
Buddhist temple, and then became the first U.S. citizen hired as a regular
staff writer for a Japanese newspaper in Japanese. If you know anything
about Japan, you'll realize how bizarre this is -- a gaijin, or foreigner,
covering Japanese cops. When I started the beat in the early 1990s, I knew
nothing about the yakuza, a.k.a. the Japanese mafia. But following their
prostitution rings and extortion rackets became my life.
Most Americans think of Japan as a law-abiding and peaceful place, as well
as our staunch ally, but reporting on the underworld gave me a different
perspective. Mobs are legal entities here. Their fan magazines and comic
books are sold in convenience stores, and bosses socialize with prime
ministers and politicians. And as far as the United States is concerned,
Japan may be refueling U.S. warships at sea, but it's not helping us fight
our own battles against organized crime -- a realization that led to my
biggest scoop.
I loved my job. The cops fighting organized crime are hard-drinking
iconoclasts -- many look like their mobster foes, with their black suits and
slicked-back hair. They're outsiders in Japanese society, and perhaps
because I was an outsider too, we got along well. The yakuza's tribal
features are also compelling, like those of an alien life form: the
full-body tattoos, missing digits and pseudo-family structure. I became so
fascinated that, like someone staring at a wild animal, I got too close and
now am worried for my life. But more on that later.
The Japanese National Police Agency (NPA) estimates that the yakuza have
almost 80,000 members. The most powerful faction, the Yamaguchi-gumi, is
known as "the Wal-Mart of the yakuza" and reportedly has close to 40,000
members. In Tokyo alone, the police have identified more than 800 yakuza
front companies: investment and auditing firms, construction companies and
pastry shops. The mobsters even set up their own bank in California,
according to underworld sources.
Over the last seven years, the yakuza have moved into finance. Japan's
Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission has an index of more than 50
listed companies with ties to organized crime. The market is so infested
that Osaka Securities Exchange officials decided in March that they would
review all listed companies and expel those found to have links with the
yakuza. If you think this has nothing to do with the United States, think
again. Americans have billions of dollars in the Japanese stock market. So
U.S. investors could be funding the Japanese mob.
I once asked a detective from Osaka why, if Japanese law enforcement knows
so much about the yakuza, the police don't just take them down. "We don't
have a RICO Act," he explained. "We don't have plea-bargaining, a
witness-protection program or witness-relocation program. So what we end up
doing most of the time is just clipping the branches. . . . If the
government would give us the tools, we'd shut them down, but we don't have
'em."
In the good old days, the yakuza made most of their money from sleaze:
prostitution, drugs, protection money and child pornography. Kiddie porn is
still part of their base income -- and another area where Japan isn't acting
like America's friend.
In 1999, my editors assigned me to cover the Tokyo neighborhood that
includes Kabukicho, Japan's largest red-light district. Japan had recently
outlawed child pornography -- reluctantly, after international pressure left
officials no choice. But the ban, which is still in effect, had a major
flaw: It criminalized producing and selling child pornography, not owning
it. So the big-money industry goes on, unabated. Last month's issue of a
widely available porn magazine proclaimed, "Our Cover Girl Is Our Youngest
Yet: 14!" Kabukicho remains loaded with the stuff, and teenage sex workers
are readily available. I've even seen specialty stores that sell the
underwear worn by teenage strippers.
The ban is so weak that investigating yakuza who peddle child pornography is
practically impossible. "The United States has referred hundreds of . . .
cases to Japanese law enforcement authorities," a U.S. embassy spokesman
recently told me. "Without exception, U.S. officials have been told that the
Japanese police cannot open an investigation because possession is legal."
In 2007, the Internet Hotline Center in Japan identified more than 500 local
sites displaying child pornography.
There's talk in Japan of criminalizing simple possession, but some political
parties (and publishers, who are raking in millions) oppose the idea. U.S.
law enforcement officers want to stop the flow of yakuza-produced child porn
into the United States and would support such a law. But they can't even
keep the yakuza themselves out of the country. Why? Because the national
police refuse to share intelligence. Last year, a former FBI agent told me
that, in a decade of conferences, the NPA had turned over the names and
birthdates of about 50 yakuza members. "Fifty out of 80,000," he said.
This lack of cooperation was partly responsible for an astonishing deal made
with the yakuza, and for the story that changed my life. On May 18, 2001,
the FBI arranged for Tadamasa Goto -- a notorious Japanese gang boss, the
one that some federal agents call the "John Gotti of Japan" -- to be flown
to the United States for a liver transplant.
Goto is alive today because of that operation -- a source of resentment
among Japanese law enforcement officials because the FBI organized it
without consulting them. From the U.S. point of view, it was a necessary
evil. The FBI had long suspected the yakuza of laundering money in the
United States, and Japanese and U.S. law enforcement officials confirm that
Goto offered to tip them off to Yamaguchi-gumi front companies and mobsters
in exchange for the transplant. James Moynihan, then the FBI representative
in Tokyo who brokered the deal, still defends the operation. "You can't
monitor the activities of the yakuza in the United States if you don't know
who they are," he said in 2007. "Goto only gave us a fraction of what he
promised, but it was better than nothing."
The suspicions about the Yamaguchi-gumi were confirmed in the fall of 2003,
when special agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), whom
I've interviewed, tracked down several million dollars deposited in U.S.
casino accounts and banks by Susumu Kajiyama, a boss known as "the Emperor
of Loan Sharks." The agents said they had not received a lead from the Tokyo
police; they got some of the information while looking back at the Goto
case.
Unlike their Japanese counterparts, U.S. law enforcement officers are
sharing tips with Japan. Officials from both countries confirm that, in
November 2003, the Tokyo police used information from ICE and the Nevada
Gaming Control Board to seize $2 million dollars in cash from a safe-deposit
box in Japan, which was leased to Kajiyama by a firm affiliated with a major
Las Vegas casino. According to ICE Special Agent Mike Cox, the Kajiyama saga
was probably not an isolated incident. "If we had some more information from
the Japan side," he told me last year, "I'm sure we'd find other cases like
it."
I'm not entirely objective on the issue of the yakuza in my adopted
homeland. Three years ago, Goto got word that I was reporting an article
about his liver transplant. A few days later, his underlings obliquely
threatened me. Then came a formal meeting. The offer was straightforward.
"Erase the story or be erased," one of them said. "Your family too."
I knew enough to take the threat seriously. So I took some advice from a
senior Japanese detective, abandoned the scoop and resigned from the Yomiuri
Shimbun two months later. But I never forgot the story. I planned to write
about it in a book, figuring that, with Goto's poor health, he'd be dead by
the time it came out. Otherwise, I planned to clip out the business of his
operation at the last minute.
I didn't bargain on the contents leaking out before my book was released,
which is what happened last November. Now the FBI and local law enforcement
are watching over my family in the States, while the Tokyo police and the
NPA look out for me in Japan. I would like to go home, but Goto has a
reputation for taking out his target and anyone else in the vicinity.
In early March, in my presence, an FBI agent asked the NPA to provide a list
of all the members of Goto's organization so that they could stop them from
coming into the country and killing my family. The NPA was reluctant at
first, citing "privacy concerns," but after much soul-searching handed over
about 50 names. But the Tokyo police file lists more than 900 members. I
know this because someone posted the file online in the summer of 2007; a
Japanese detective was fired because of the leak.
Of course, I'm a little biased. I don't think it's selfish of me to value
the safety of my family more than the personal privacy of crooks. And as a
crime reporter, I'm baffled that the Japanese don't share intelligence on
the yakuza with the United States.
Then again, perhaps I'm being unreasonable. Maybe some powerful Japanese are
simply ashamed of how strong the yakuza have become. And if they're not
ashamed, they should be.
Jake Adelstein is the author of the forthcoming "Tokyo Vice: An American
Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan."
Ciao
Alex
