A Foreign Ministry official dismissed for the suspected embezzlement of secret government funds allegedly padded hotel expenses on his first assignment as head of a division supporting overseas visits by prime ministers and other top officials in 1993, police have said.
Katsutoshi Matsuo, 55, allegedly padded the accommodation expenses incurred by a 36-member government mission on a one-night stay at a hotel in Pusan, South Korea, from Nov. 6 to 7, 1993, police said Friday.
The mission was led by then Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa. The padded expenses were covered by discretionary funds for unspecified purposes from the Cabinet Secretariat, police said.
It was Matsuo's first logistics job after he became head of the now-defunct Overseas Visit Support Division at the ministry in October that year.
The allegation led investigators to suspect that Matsuo padded all expenses on the 46 trips made by prime ministers during his tenure as division head from 1993 to 1999.
The allegation came to light after the Metropolitan Police Department checked the actual hotel accommodation fees and the requests Matsuo had made to the Cabinet Secretariat through the Prime Minister's Office for all 46 trips.
The MPD has questioned an aide to Hosokawa who is believed to have handed the expenses to Matsuo.
The 36-member delegation included seven officials at the Prime Minister's Official Residence, seven security officers and 19 Foreign Ministry officials, according to police.
The secret government funds -- officially termed "compensation expenses" -- are primarily intended to cover intelligence-gathering costs, which are seldom backed up by receipts.
In reality, however, the funds -- held by both the Cabinet Secretariat and Foreign Ministry -- are also used to cover logistics such as hotel accommodation and transport expenses for official overseas trips by the prime minister and other VIPs.