Japan’s yakuza organized crime groups, having operated openly in their home country for more than a century, are facing tougher treatment by an overseas foe: US President Barack Obama’s administration.
The largest of Japan’s yakuza organizations, the Yamaguchi-gumi, and two of its leaders will have their US assets frozen and transactions barred under sanctions announced yesterday by the Treasury Department.
The group earns “billions of US dollars” a year from crimes in Japan and abroad, including drug and human trafficking, prostitution, money laundering and fraud, the department said in a statement.
The US move represents “a slap in the face of the Japanese government” for failing to rein in organized crime, said Jake Adelstein, a Tokyo-based writer who covers the yakuza.
“The US government feels that the Japanese government is very tolerant toward organized crime,” Adelstein said today by telephone. It is telling Japanese authorities, “Start doing something about your problem,” he said.
The Yamaguchi-gumi’s leaders targeted by the sanctions are its “godfather,” Kenichi Shinoda, 70, and his deputy Kiyoshi Takayama, 64, the Treasury Department said in the statement. The US also imposed sanctions against seven “key members and associates” of a syndicate called the Brothers’ Circle, based in Central Asia, Russia and the Middle East.
They are the first targets under an executive order issued by Obama last year “to target transnational criminal organizations and isolate them from the global financial system,” US Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David Cohen said in the statement.
US Treasury Department spokesman John Sullivan said Japan is making efforts to fight criminal organizations.
“Undersecretary Cohen noted that we are coordinating with the Japanese government when it comes to combating transnational criminal groups, and recognized the significant steps that the Japanese have taken, especially recently, to target the Yakuza,” Sullivan said in an e-mail.
A man who answered a phone call on Friday to the Yamaguchi-gumi’s headquarters in the western city of Kobe hung up when asked to make a spokesperson available.
“The Japanese government has been watching the situation closely with interest and has been exchanging information with the US,” Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura said on Friday. “We should promote stronger measures against organized crime gangs.”
The Yamaguchi-gumi, which operates out of a two-building complex in a residential neighborhood, was estimated to represent 44 percent of Japan’s yakuza with 34,900 members as of December 2010, according to the National Police Agency.
The group has “significant” overseas assets, Adelstein said. In 2005, US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement seized almost US$600,000 from accounts belonging to Susumu Kajiyama, a yakuza member who was sentenced in Japan for loan-sharking. In 2003, Swiss authorities said they seized 61 million Swiss francs (US$68 million) from accounts in Kajiyama’s name.
“While this is more of a sting than a blow, it certainly won’t make them happy,” Adelstein said of the US action.
Shinoda was released in April from a Japanese prison, where he had served a six-year term related to firearms possession, according to the National Police Agency.
Shinoda and Takayama are “the top two representatives of the Yamaguchi-gumi,” Adelstein said. “Everyone knows who they are.”
The yakuza have been a force in Japanese society since at least the pre-1868 Edo period. While the group is linked to criminal activities including gambling and prostitution, yakuza also have been hailed for community service. In 1995, its members aided earthquake-hit neighborhoods of Kobe.
Japanese police are “doubling” efforts to crack down on the yakuza, the National Police Agency said in its 2010 White Paper, published last July. In 2010, 68 top members of the Yamaguchi-gumi and its affiliates, including Takayama, were arrested, compared with 23 arrests a year earlier.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion