Tokyo, Japan — Stake outs, testimony from informers, hidden cameras and tailing trucks full of stolen goods - it reads like a Hollywood movie, but it was an every day experience for Greenpeace activists in Japan, who have spent four months cracking open a major conspiracy of corruption at the heart of Japan's government-backed, sham scientific whaling operation.
Today we displayed a cardboard box filled with the best cuts of whale meat, smuggled ashore by the crew of the Japanese whaling factory ship,
Nisshin Maru, for illegal trade and personal gain, at the Japanese taxpayer's expense. The box, along with videotaped testimony and other evidence, suggest widespread embezzlement of whale meat has been occurring for decades under the noses of the public officials who run the whaling programme, and are allowing it to happen.
Our activists delivered the evidence, including the whale meat, to the Public Prosecutor's office in Tokyo, calling on it to make a full public enquiry into how deep the corruption runs with the whaling programme. We're also calling for an end to the USD$4.7 million taxpayer subsidies for the programme, and for the license of the company operating the whale hunt, Kyodo Senpaku, to be withdrawn.
The four-month Greenpeace investigation employed undercover tactics to reveal dramatic evidence of an embezzlement ring involving crewmembers on board the
Nisshin Maru. Informers who spoke to the activists claim that senior crew and officials from Kyodo Senpaku turned a blind eye to the whale meat theft, allowing it to continue for decades. One informer associated with Kyodo Senpaku told Greenpeace that officials from the Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR) - the agency that carries out the so-called "scientific research" work on board the
Nisshin Maru - are most likely aware of the thefts as well.
"The information we have gathered indicates that the scale of the scandal is so great, it would be impossible for the ship's operating company, Kyodo Senpaku, not to know," said Junichi Sato, Greenpeace Japan whales campaign coordinator. "Kyodo Senpaku is turning their back on large scale corruption and theft of taxpayers' money. What we need to know now, through a full public enquiry, is who else is profiting from the whaling programme? Who else has allowed this fraud to continue?" Sato added.
Working from information given by former and current Kyodo Senpaku employees, the Greenpeace investigators secretly documented the offloading of smuggled whale meat into a special truck, while Kyodo Senpaku officials and crew members stood by, following the
Nisshin Maru's return earlier this year, on April 15th. Greenpeace then tracked the consignment from the ship to a depot in Tokyo.
(more)
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/whale-meat-scandal-150408
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