Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi rejected allegations Thursday that his close aide swindled a man, now deceased, out of shares currently worth about 2.3 billion yen. "I understand that he did nothing wrong," Obuchi said during an Upper House plenary session , adding that he himself was not involved in the alleged incident. "I find it very regrettable that it sounds like I was involved in it," Obuchi said, responding to a question by Shoji Motooka, a member of the largest opposition Democratic Party of Japan. The aide, Toshitaka Furukawa, was accused in an article in the Weekly Gendai magazine of swindling the man out of shares in NTT Mobile Communications Network Inc. (NTT DoCoMo). Furukawa has filed a complaint with police against the editor of the magazine and the journalist who wrote the story. It was the first Upper House plenary session to be held since the opposition ended its two-week boycott of the Diet on Wednesday, protesting the ruling bloc's handling of a law to cut Lower House seats. The law, which cuts 20 of the 200 proportional representation seats in the 500-member Lower House, was enacted Feb. 2 after the Upper House passed it in the absence of opposition members. In Thursday's session Chief Cabinet Secretary Mikio Aoki denied opposition claims that he pressured Upper House President Juro Saito last week to ignore opposition protests and hold a vote on the law in the chamber. "I did not in any way force the Upper House president to hold a vote," Aoki said.
