An unnamed Japanese diplomat is refusing to pay a hotel in Tokyo ¥15 million for his roughly 300-day stay there, prompting the inn to consider legal action, sources said Wednesday.
The hotel, which was not named, is considering filing a lawsuit or criminal complaint with police if the 40-year-old public servant from the Foreign Ministry's Economic Affairs Bureau doesn't pay up, the sources said.
The bureaucrat lived in a semi-suite room that cost more than ¥50,000 per night for about 300 days from June 2006 to April last year after leaving his home in Tokyo "due to family matters," they said.
Since then, he has been living in government quarters in Kawasaki, the sources said.
The Sankei Shimbun reported in its online version that the bureaucrat has asked for a major discount in a letter of apology to the hotel.
The Sankei quoted the man as saying in the letter: "I, as a human being, feel extremely ashamed of my breach of contract, and I know I should make no excuses.
"But I have no competence to pay the bill now. It would be very nice if you could consider reducing the daily charge (for semi-suite) to that of an ordinary room, and then multiply the rate by the number of days I spent there," the Sankei quoted the bureaucrat as saying.
Scandals involving government bureaucrats never end. Recently, more than 500 bureaucrats at 13 ministries admitted to accepting favors from taxi drivers in the form of cash, coupons and merchandise during taxpayer-funded rides to their homes late at night.