Recruit Co

Japanese Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita said he will not be driven from office by a stock-trading scandal that has forced three Cabinet ministers to resign. He said he will try to restore public trust in government. Opposition leaders have demanded Takeshita's removal in the wake of the resignation of Ken Harada, director of the Economic Planning Agency, because of links to Recruit Co., the firm at the center of the stock-trading and alleged influence-peddling scandal.

Daiei Buys Stake in Recruit: Daiei Inc., Japan's top supermarket chain, said it will take about a one-third stake in Recruit Co., the information firm at the heart of an influence-peddling scandal that rocked the government in the late 1980s. Former Recruit Chairman Hiromasa Ezoe will sell most of his shares in the company to Daiei, led by Chief Executive Isao Nakauchi, a management maverick with a penchant for buyouts. News of the deal sent Daiei shares soaring.

Japanese prosecutors indicted a former Cabinet minister Thursday on tax evasion charges related to alleged stock speculation, threatening to hobble the ruling Liberal Democratic Party with yet another political fund-raising scandal. Indicted but not taken into custody was Toshiyuki Inamura, 55. He was charged with evading income taxes on about $20 million in profits from stock transactions between 1986 and 1988.

The wife of a Japanese member of Parliament said she is so fed up with the leadership of her husband's ruling party that she will run for election on an independent ticket. Makiko Hamada, 47, wife of Takujiro Hamada, a Liberal Democratic member of the lower house, said she has had enough of money politics, which have embroiled the party in its biggest scandal in more than 30 years. The scandal, in which the Recruit Co.

Daiei Buys Stake in Recruit: Daiei Inc., Japan's top supermarket chain, said it will take about a one-third stake in Recruit Co., the information firm at the heart of an influence-peddling scandal that rocked the government in the late 1980s. Former Recruit Chairman Hiromasa Ezoe will sell most of his shares in the company to Daiei, led by Chief Executive Isao Nakauchi, a management maverick with a penchant for buyouts. News of the deal sent Daiei shares soaring.

Four businessmen were formally charged with bribery in a stock scandal that has toppled several high officials of the Japanese government and tarnished the reputation of Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita. Those indicted included Hiromasa Ezoe, 52, founder and former chairman of the Recruit Co. conglomerate, and Hiroshi Kobayashi, 43, head of First Finance, a Recruit subsidiary that financed the insider stock sales involved in the scandal.

Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita's appointee as justice minister, purportedly selected this week because he was untainted by a burgeoning stock scandal, acknowledged Wednesday night that he has received substantial political contributions from the company at the center of the scandal. Takashi Hasegawa told reporters Tuesday, when he was appointed to the sensitive Cabinet job, that he was "totally free" of any connection to the Recruit Co. stock scandal.

Shareholders of Recruit Co., the firm at the center of a stock-profiteering and bribery scandal, voted Saturday to slash executives' salaries, company spokesman Yasutaka Natsuka reported. He said they also voted to deny retirement pay to the firm's founder and former chairman, Hiromasa Ezoe.

A top Japanese businessman received a suspended jail sentence and heavy fine Tuesday for his role in the 1988 Recruit corruption scandal, which brought down the government and sparked fierce debate about political fund raising. But political analysts said the verdict will have little impact in reforming the nation's money-oriented political system. Hisashi Shinto, former chairman of telecommunications giant Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp.

A former associate of ex-Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone has been arrested for alleged illegal stock market dealings a year after the Recruit Corp. scandal wrecked a government. The Tokyo District Prosecutor's Office on Thursday arrested real estate company owner and speculator Mitsuhiro Kotani, 53, on suspicion of manipulating shares of a hotel chain.

A former Labor Ministry official was convicted on bribery charges Monday in the nation's most serious financial scandal, the Recruit Co. affair that toppled one prime minister and contributed to the resignation of another last year.

An eighth member of Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu's new Cabinet today acknowledged receiving donations from a company at the center of an influence-buying scandal. "I would like to make a sincere apology," said Takashi Fukaya, the post and telecommunications minister, at a nationally televised meeting of the upper house budget committee. Fukaya said his support group received more than $5,200 from Recruit Co. over 3 1/2 years until July, 1988, when the scandal surfaced.

A federal judge has temporarily shut down an employment agency partly owned by Japan's Recruit Co., saying that the firm destroyed records relating to a federal discrimination probe. U.S. District Judge Stanley Weigel in San Francisco issued a restraining order Friday halting business at the five offices of Interplace/Transworld Recruit Inc. Weigel issued the shutdown order, highly unusual in a discrimination case, at the request of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

It's December, and Motoko Kaneko is expecting the usual: a couple of dozen hams. She won't be able to eat them or unload them before they go bad, but she'll have to write thank-you letters anyway--and next year she'll have to reciprocate. "It's always a headache season when December rolls around," Kaneko said as she stood in front of the gift-meat counter ($70 for about a pound and a half of thinly sliced beef in a nice box) in the Matsuzakaya department store. "I hate it."

The wife of a Japanese member of Parliament said she is so fed up with the leadership of her husband's ruling party that she will run for election on an independent ticket. Makiko Hamada, 47, wife of Takujiro Hamada, a Liberal Democratic member of the lower house, said she has had enough of money politics, which have embroiled the party in its biggest scandal in more than 30 years. The scandal, in which the Recruit Co.