By Makiko Yamazaki
TOKYO (Reuters) -The investigators who revealed Toshiba Corp colluded with Japan’s trade ministry to pressure foreign shareholders defended the integrity of their inquiry, pushing back against government criticism it was one-sided.
Takao Nakamura, one of the three lawyers who conducted the shareholder-commissioned investigation that exposed the corporate governance scandal at Toshiba, said the three did their best to include the viewpoint of a key figure in the saga even after they were stonewalled by a ministry official.
“We, as investigators, would argue against claims that question the reliability of the report,” Nakamura, a partner at Wadakura Gate Law Office, told Reuters. He said his view was shared by his two co-investigators.
“It was compiled in a way that various criticism can be countered,” he said of the investigation. Nakamura’s comments mark the first time investigators have responded to the government’s criticism.
The investigation found that Hiromichi Mizuno, a board member of electric-car maker Tesla and until recently an adviser to Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), effectively influenced Harvard University’s endowment fund to abstain from voting at Toshiba’s shareholder meeting last year.
Mizuno has told Reuters he did not pressure Harvard and has called on the fund to “set the record straight”.
Japan’s trade minister has said probe did not reflect Mizuno’s comments from his interview with the investigators. That interview was arranged and attended by METI officials, the minister has said.
Nakamura said investigators were stonewalled by a METI official when they tried to submit a draft summary of Mizuno’s comments for his review.
Mizuno did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.
A senior METI official, Masayoshi Arai, said investigators did not follow the proper format and included comments in their draft summary they had been told by Mizuno not to use.
(Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki; Editing by David Dolan, Mark Heinrich and Jane Merriman)
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