Tax money used to repay debts created by soccer lottery

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Tax money used to repay debts created by soccer lottery

Akahata on November 15 revealed that the National Agency for the Advancement of Sports and Health (NAASH), an education ministry-supervised independent administrative agency that runs the soccer lottery called "toto", has used tax money to repay its debt.

This is the first case that state funds have been used to cover debts run up by lottery and gambling.

The agency and the Education, Culture, Sports, and Science and Technology Ministry must be held responsible for using public money without even providing the public with any explanation.

NAASH was required to repay at once 21.6 billion yen to Resona Bank after terminating the subcontract relations it had had with the bank since its founding. Last September, it paid off the money to Resona by borrowing 19 billion yen from Mizuho Bank and using its internal funds of 2.6 billion yen.

The NAASH admitted that most of the 2.6 billion yen was disbursed from the state-sponsored funds for the advancement of sports.

It has been further revealed that the agency has also used the same public funds as collateral for the loan from Mizuho Bank.

The education ministry has explained in the Diet that it will not use tax money to cover the NAASH's debts. Concerning the disbursement from the sports advancement funds, the ministry insists that the 2.6 billion yen will be reimbursed in the future, and that this is not a case of misusing tax money.

However, as the sales of "toto" in this fiscal year reached only 9.1 billion yen as of November 12, they will never reach the 25 billion yen necessary to generate profits. Thus, the government is only making things worse.
- Akahata, November 15, 2006