As an adviser to the Finance Services Agency and to Mr. Heizo Takenaka, who was the financial services minister during the Koizumi administration, Mr. Takeshi Kimura was deeply involved in the nation's financial policies related to the disposal of bad loans and the introduction of strict audits of financial institutions.
So, it is ironic that Mr. Kimura, former chairman of Incubator Bank of Japan, together with the bank's president, Mr. Tatsuya Nishino, and three others, was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of obstructing an FSA audit of the bank.
Mr. Kimura is suspected of instructing subordinates to delete some 280 e-mails from the bank's computer servers between June 2009 and March 2010, in violation of the Banking Business Law, in order to prevent the FSA from learning about the bank's operations and financial conditions.