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Ex-Nova boss gets 3 1/2 yrs for embezzlement

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The former president of failed language school chain Nova Corp. was sentenced Wednesday to 3-1/2 years in prison for professional embezzlement involving misuse of the reserve funds of an employees mutual aid organization.

In the ruling given at the Osaka District Court, presiding Judge Hiroaki Higuchi said Nozomu Sahashi, 57, decided management strategies as the founder of Nova and that there was no room for leniency concerning his use of the reserve funds, which were not operational funds, to improve the firm’s financial situation.

The firm is now undergoing bankruptcy proceedings.

The judge also said, “He had no prospects of repaying the money, and he bore grave criminal responsibility.”

Prosecutors had demanded five years’ imprisonment for Sahashi.

According to the ruling, in July 2007, Sahashi, acting in conspiracy with a 50-year-old Nova executive in charge of finance, had about 320 million yen transferred from the funds to a bank account of a Nova affiliate to be used to refund prepaid tuitions to former students.

In the ruling, the judge said: “The executive [in charge of finance] confirmed in advance with Sahashi that the funds were not operational funds. Sahashi misused the funds knowing that the employees wouldn’t approve.”

He also said: “It’s not unreasonable that he wanted to help Nova survive. He also apologized. But he used the employees’ funds to help the firm out of its management problems. There’s no room for leniency.”

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20090827TDY01303.htm

Political shift gives hope to gays

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The likelihood that the Democratic Party of Japan, the last party to submit [an antidiscrimination law] bill, will dominate the powerful House of Representatives in an alliance with the Social Democratic Party, which speaks out for homosexual rights, has raised hopes that the inertia may at last be overcome.

This was echoed by Boris Dittrich, advocacy director of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender program at Human Rights Watch, who visited Japan last month. He met with key opposition party figures to discuss Japan’s future on issues of sexual orientation.

“There is no law in Japan that protects people who are being discriminated on the basis of sexual orientation,” Dittrich told reporters on July 22.

“So for instance, a landlord would evict somebody because he is gay or she is lesbian and there is no law that you can refer to for protection,” he added. Dittrich himself was a publicly gay politician in his home country, the Netherlands, where he was a pioneer in securing homosexual rights.

In Japan, a government-sponsored antidiscrimination bill submitted to the Diet in 2002, but later abandoned, would have protected the rights of homosexuals along with other groups, including “burakumin,” or descendants of former outcast communities such as tanners, according to Kanae Doi, Tokyo director of Human Rights Watch. The 2002 bill and another one proposed by the DPJ were both scrapped because the lower chamber was dissolved before they could be fully deliberated and voted on.

SDP leader Mizuho Fukushima, who also met with Dittrich during his trip, agreed human rights is a sensitive topic in the Diet, and the subject of sexual orientation faces a particularly tough time as people do not necessarily feel it is relevant to them.

If the DPJ wins Sunday, Fukushima predicts a slow but steady improvement in homosexual rights.

“It won’t be, for example, that same-sex marriages will be recognized immediately. But for now we must educate people, eradicate bullying and make people understand that these problems exist in society,” she said

According to Human Rights Watch’s [Tokyo director Kanae] Doi, Japan is falling behind global standards by not having an antidiscrimination law other than that protecting gender equality.

“An antidiscrimination law exists almost everywhere else in the world. But in Japan, since there is no law protecting sexual orientation, gender identity, ethnicity or race, it is difficult for such people to prosecute,” she said.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20090827f2.html

Ex-Nova chief gets prison term

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Nozomu Sahashi, founder of bankrupt English language school chain Nova Corp., was sentenced Wednesday to three years and six months in prison for embezzlement.

Presiding Judge Hiroaki Higuchi of the Osaka District Court said there was no room for leniency because Sahashi, 57, diverted money pooled for employee benefits to deal with his company’s crisis.

Sahashi had pleaded innocent.

According to the ruling, Sahashi embezzled 320 million yen from a Nova employee mutual-aid association in July 2007 and used the money in part to refund tuition fees for about students who had terminated contracts.

The company’s board of directors ousted Sahashi as president at an extraordinary meeting in October 2007 over Nova’s deteriorated business performance.

http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200908270058.html

Nova boss handed 3 1/2 years

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Former Nova President Nozomu Sahashi was sentenced Wednesday to 3 1/2 years in prison by the Osaka District Court for his role in skimming off employee funds in 2007, just before the foreign language school giant’s bankruptcy that October.

Presiding Judge Hiroaki Higuchi’s severe sentence took some in the courtroom by surprise. Prosecutors had sought five years for the former president of what was once the country’s largest foreign language school chain and employer of foreign nationals. Sahashi is expected to appeal the sentence.

“While it’s undeniable that if Nova couldn’t refund canceled student contracts, this would have invited doubts about the firm’s trustworthiness. The defendant, as founder of the company, played a central role in this incident . . . ¥320 million is a large amount and, at the moment, it has not been returned,” Higuchi said in handing down the sentence.

Sahashi was charged with funneling nearly ¥320 million from employee benefit funds to a bank account belonging to a Nova affiliate in July 2007. He denied embezzling the funds, telling the court he used the money on behalf of his employees.

He tried to portray himself as only one of a group of senior Nova executives responsible for the decision. But the judge said that given the amount of money and his authority, Sahashi bore a heavy responsibility for the crime.

October 2007, Nova filed for bankruptcy with debts of roughly ¥43.9 billion, failing to pay about 2,000 Japanese and 4,000 non-Japanese employees.

Katsuji Yamahara, chairman of [Tokyo Nambu’s sister union] the Osaka-based General Union, welcomed the decision, but said the case itself was not the main problem with what happened at Nova.

“Many ex-Nova employees have yet to receive their unpaid wages. We’ve been working through the Osaka Central Labor Standards Supervision Office to try to get those wages, but it’s been slow-going,” Yamahara said.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20090827a1.html

Mindan fights for foreigners’ local-level suffrage

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Foreigners won’t have the right to vote in Sunday’s election but the national association of South Koreans, the largest ethnic group of permanent foreign residents, is waging a rare political campaign to win local-level suffrage because it believes there is too much at stake this time.

The Korean Residents Union in Japan (Mindan), which represents permanent South Korean residents, is campaigning for candidates in favor of foreigners’ suffrage in local-level elections.

Whether to give permanent foreign residents suffrage has long been a contentious political issue. Mindan has been pursuing the right for many years, and the election is viewed as a big chance to improve the odds, a senior Mindan official said.

“We are working to get as many candidates who are in favor of giving permanent residents local suffrage rights elected to the Diet,” Seo Won Cheol told The Japan Times.

“We are local residents just like Japanese citizens, but our rights have been ignored for too long, and our frustration has reached its peak,” Seo said, noting Mindan will push legislators to submit the bill to the next extraordinary Diet session.

“We are local residents of the community,” he said. “It is unthinkable that more than half a century has passed without giving us the right to participate in the community in a democratic society.”

Political parties are sharply divided over the issue. New Komeito, the Japanese Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party are clearly supportive of granting foreigners local-level suffrage. But the DPJ is still trying to unify its stance.

Critics of the idea of foreigner suffrage say the Constitution stipulates that sovereignty rests with the people, who are defined as as those who hold Japanese nationality. Thus one must obtain that before being given the right to vote.

Meanwhile, many countries, including South Korea, have given foreign permanent residents the right to vote in local elections, believing community-level political participation to be necessary and no threat to their sovereignty.

“What’s important is that we get as many people supporting the suffrage issue into the Diet,” he said.

Giving local suffrage to special permit holders is beneficial for the entire country, Seo said, adding that South Korea gave permanent residents local suffrage in 2005.

“To respect the rights of foreigners means that the country is keen on protecting the human rights of Japanese citizens as well, so I believe it’s actually a national benefit,” he said.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20090827a3.html

Ex-Nova boss handed prison sentence for embezzling from workers’ fund

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The Osaka District Court on Wednesday sentenced the former president of collapsed English language school operator Nova, who went on trial facing charges of embezzling money from an employees’ fund, to three years, six months behind bars.

Handed the sentence was former company president Nozomu Sahashi, 57. According to the ruling, Sahashi transferred 320 million yen from the savings account of a mutual aid organization of Nova employees into a separate account. He then exchanged the amount for a check and deposited the money into the account of related company Nova Kikaku, thereby embezzling the funds, the ruling said.

During his trial Sahashi had admitted to the facts of the case, but said he had not been under the perception that he was forbidden from using the money. Lawyers for Sahashi argued that he was innocent, saying that he had no intention of illegally misappropriating the money, and that his actions did not constitute professional embezzlement.

On Aug. 19, Nova’s bankruptcy administrator filed a lawsuit in the Osaka District Court seeking about 2.136 billion yen in damages, saying that Sahashi repeatedly made unnecessary transactions, resulting in losses. It also filed a criminal complaint against Sahashi with the Osaka District Public Prosecutors Office, accusing him of aggravated breach of trust.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20090826p2a00m0na018000c.html

Ex-Nova Head Sahashi Found Guilty of Embezzlement, Asahi Says

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The former president of Nova Corp., once Japan’s biggest English-language school operator, was found guilty of embezzlement and sentenced to prison by the Osaka district court, the Asahi newspaper said.

The court found today Nozomu Sahashi redirected 320 million yen ($3.4 million) from his employees’ welfare program to the company before its bankruptcy in 2007, the Asahi reported, citing judge Hiroaki Higuchi. Sahashi, 57, was given a sentence of three years and six months.

Sahashi founded Nova in 1981 and the Osaka-based company had more than 900 branches at its peak. Nova’s finances worsened after the government in June 2007 ordered it to suspend operations for violating rules on commercial transactions. It filed for bankruptcy protection in October that year.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=anM2GNuZ.3_4

NTT fails to pay pension premiums

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The Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. group [a company one third owned by the Japanese government] failed to pay to the state a portion of pension premiums of about 4,000 employees over more than six years to August 2003 despite deducting the money from the workers’ salaries.

Sources attributed the failure to clerical errors. The group has already filed a request to a government third-party panel that the pension records be corrected to ensure the employees receive the benefits they are entitled to, officials said.

According to the sources, discrepancies were found between pension records maintained by the Social Insurance Agency and those at the group’s employee pension fund. No records were held by the agency for about 20 short-term contract workers.

http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200908240075.html

Japanese women ‘still not equal’

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A United Nations panel has urged Japan to take stronger measures to eliminate gender inequality.

The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women said the country’s efforts were “insufficient”.

It pointed to unequal laws on marriage, the treatment of women in the labour market and the low representation of women on elected bodies.

But the committee said Japan had made great progress reducing the already low maternal mortality rate.

It said the world’s second-biggest economy ranked 54th in the world in terms of gender equality.

It was concerned over the low legal penalty for rape and the widespread availability in Japan of violent pornography, it added.

And the committee said Japan should set goals to increase the number of women in senior decision-making positions in the workplace and politics.

It said the age at which women can marry should be raised from 16 to 18 in line with men.

And a six-month waiting period before remarriage after divorce that applies only to women should be scrapped.

The committee called for immediate action, but did note that Japan had already put in place numerous laws to promote gender equality.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8213493.stm

U.N. panel raps Japan on gender gap

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Japan has not made sufficient efforts to eliminate discrimination against women, the U.N. committee against gender discrimination here said Tuesday.

The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women urged the government to revise Civil Code stipulations obliging husbands and wives to use the same surname and allowing females to marry at younger ages than males.

The committee also asked Japan to rectify discriminatory work practices, such as different promotion courses and wage inequities.

The committee examined the government’s efforts for gender equality for the first time in six years based on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.

http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200908210069.html