Bank CEO Checks Out Reporter's Assets

[Mulboyne]

[floatl][/floatl]According to ZakZak, the weekly magazine Friday has a five page exposé on Mizuho Corporate Bank CEO Hiroshi Saito. Saito runs the investment banking unit of the Mizuho group and that's where the company has been most exposed to the crisis in subprime markets. Mizuho appears to have suffered more than it domestic competitors and critics have been lining up calling for Saito to take responsibility and resign. Friday takes a different line of attack: it accuses Saito of committing adultery with a TV Tokyo reporter. Saito serves as an external director to the broadcaster and, last week, used the Mizuho company car to take the reporter to a sushi restaurant in Azabu. When they left a little after an hour, they were snapped by a photographer kissing on the street. ZakZak doesn't have the actual photograph but they helpfully provide an artist's impression in case you can't find a copy of the magazine. The two went on to a nearby mansion and didn't emerge for another two and a half hours. Both Mizuho and TV Tokyo have declined to comment. The reporter isn't named but the article explains how she joined TV Tokyo in 1999 and was in the sales department before being assigned to the financial markets division as a reporter. We are also told that she colours her hair and has big breasts. ZakZak claims that this kind of photograph of a top bank executive is unprecedented and compares the impact it will have with a similar shot taken just over a couple of years ago which showed TV newscaster Mona Yamamoto kissing married DPJ politician Goshi Hosono. Details of their affair led to his resignation and her suspension. Yamamoto only recently returned to her main work but immediately found herself in trouble again. The ZakZak piece makes it clear many believe Saito has been set-up. One commentator suggests that senior mangers in Mizuho are unhappy that he has not resigned to take responsibility for his unit's losses and they would have been in the best position to tip-off the weekly about where to catch him.

[Cortana]

Riiiiight. set up. LOOK AT HIS HANDS. THIS IS A MAN WHO IS EXPERIENCED AT GROPING!

[Mulboyne]

They've played the gaijin card:

Shukan Post via Japan Today: 'Honey trap' scandal hits Mizuho Corporate Bank

Weekly magazine Friday recently scooped the intimate relationship between the president of Mizuho Corporate Bank (MCB) and a news reporter from TV Tokyo. Following the scandal, insiders said the affair might have been a “honey trap” by the Chinese government. Friday reported last week that Hiroshi Saito, 64, the president of MCB, was having an affair with a 32-year-old Chinese-Japanese news reporter. It published a photo of the two kissing on the street. Saito is a graduate of Tokyo University and joined Daiichi Kogyo Bank in 1966 and became president of MCB which was formed as a merger between Daiichi Kangyo Bank, Fuji Bank and Nihon Kogyo Bank in 2002. The TV reporter was born in Yokohama in a Chinese-Japanese family and joined the network in 1999. Some officials of the Financial Service Agency (FSA) are suspicious that the affair may have been a honey trap maneuver by the Chinese government. “The reporter has a strong relationship with China. She often attends media receptions organized by the Chinese embassy in Japan. It is likely that Saito leaked some confidential information to her who in turn passed it onto her Chinese masters. Saito is in a position where he has access to valuable information,” says a FSA official.

Officials of TV Tokyo say it’s not clear why the reporter was dating Saito. One of them says, “I heard that she has another young boyfriend, so you have to wonder what she and Saito were doing. Considering her job as a journalist, you can’t criticize her for trying to get information.” One insider at Mizuho Financial Group, the parent company of MCB, says, “Saito is famous for being fond of Chinese women. He often told his colleagues that her restaurant in Yokohama is good. There were rumors once before about some shady dealings concerning his relationship with another Chinese woman, so many of us were worried that this would be an even bigger scandal.” A spokesperson for MCB declined to comment on the scandal but said, “We apologize if anyone has been caused trouble, but this is a private mater and we cannot comment further.”

[amdg]

They've played the gaijin card:

Shukan Post via Japan Today: 'Honey trap' scandal hits Mizuho Corporate Bank

Holy crap. That's not just playing the gaijin card, that's treating the poor old president of Mizuho like a naive elementry schoolgirl who got lured into a pedophile's van and raped.

Something tells me that's not exactly how it played out in reality.