On June 14, 2009, the special investigation squad of the Osaka District Public Prosecutors Office arrested Ms. Atsuko Muraki, who was then chief of the welfare ministry's Equal Employment, Children and Families Bureau, on suspicion of issuing a fabricated certificate to recognize an organization as a group for the disabled, thus enabling it to use a postage discount system.
The prosecution alleges that in 2004, a Diet member, acting on a request from a member of the organization, had asked Ms. Muraki's boss for help and that under his instruction, Ms. Muraki, then head of the section in charge of measures for the disabled, had her subordinate Mr. Tsutomu Kamimura (indicted on the same charge as she) forge a false certificate in June 2004.
On May 26, the Osaka District Court adopted only nine of 43 depositions presented by the prosecution. It dismissed all depositions that referred to Ms. Muraki's involvement in the case, including 15 sets of depositions from Mr. Kamimura, on which the prosecution had based most of its allegations against Ms. Muraki.