The Japan Agricultural News found out on October 31 that the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) had excluded information on actual selling prices of rice imported under “simultaneous buy and sell” (SBS) system, even though MAFF had gotten wholesalers’ testimonies on their selling prices set for rice users after deducting so-called “adjustment money” paid by trading houses through its latest investigation regarding shady transactions of the imported rice.
At the investigation, MAFF received concrete information about selling prices of the imported rice under the SBS system from all the wholesalers that admitted their involvements in the rice transactions with kickbacks called “adjustment money.”
When a report on the investigation was disclosed, however, MAFF did not put the information on the selling prices into the report for the reason that wholesalers had replied to its officials only in “abstract” words.
An executive of one of the rice wholesalers investigated by MAFF, a medium-sized company based at the western part of the country, was interviewed by a reporter of the Japan Agricultural News and firmly stated that he had told MAFF’s officials about an example of their business deals of “Koshihikari” rice produced in Australia, for which his company paired up with a trading firm in making a successful bid under the state-controlled SBS system in fiscal 2013. He provided the officials with concrete information by saying “We sold the Australian rice to users with a price range of 180-190 yen per kilogram.”
At the interview with the reporter of the Agricultural News, the executive of the rice wholesaler guessed a reason why MAFF had not revealed his testimony by saying “It might be inconvenient for MAFF officials to uncover a real situation that cheaper imported rice is being transacted in the market.”