U.S. Treasury Department Guns For Japanese Yakuza Groups

 

Jake Adelstein, the author of Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter On the Police Beat in Japan, offers an interesting piece in The Daily Beast on the U.S. Treasury's crackdown on Japanese organized crime.

The U.S. Department of Treasury imposed sanctions on Japan's second largest yakuza crime syndicate, the Sumiyoshi-Kai and its leaders today. The sanctions make it possible to freeze their U.S. assets and block their transactions with American corporations or other entities.

The Sumiyoshi-Kai’s leader, Shigeo Nishiguchi, and the underboss Hareaki Fukuda, were added to the U.S. Treasury’s list of persons that are targeted for punitive financial measures.

The Sumiyoshi-kai is a designated organized crime group in Japan, regulated but not outlawed. It has offices, the members have business cards; fan magazines, comics, and books list the top executives and celebrate their exploits. The Sumiyoshi-kai, with close to 11,000 members, is based in Tokyo, with offices in the luxurious Ginza area and flashy Akasaka. The group’s moneymaking activities include real estate, construction, prostitution, temporary staffing, as well as the standard extortion, blackmail, and racketeering.

You can read the rest of the story via the below link:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/28/u-s-treasury-department-guns-for-japanese-yakuza-groups.html

You can also read also read my Crime Beat column on Jake Adelstein's Tokyo Vice via the below link:

http://pauldavisoncrime.blogspot.com/2010/03/tokyo-vice-american-reporter-on-police.html