At least 110 government and public corporation offices paid extortion money to mobsters over the past year, caving in to demands to buy merchandise, subscribe to publications, make donations or pay hush money, the National Police Agency said Thursday.
The agency said the figure came from a nationwide survey in June of local and regional offices of government ministries, Japan Highway Public Corp., Japan Post and other public corporations.
Officials from 1,030 government offices responded that their office had been targets of coercive demands, 772 of them in the past year. Questionnaires were sent to 4,179 central government and public corporation offices and 3,658 of them responded.