US sanctions companies linked to Japanese yakuza
Washington aims to disrupt global financial infrastructure of criminal organisation
The US Treasury has imposed sanctions on companies and individuals associated with the most powerful yakuza crime syndicate in Japan, accusing the group of “acting globally” in concert with criminal affiliates around the world.
The department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control announced on Tuesday that it had taken action against four individuals associated with the Yamaguchi-gumi syndicate and, for the first time, against two companies owned by the yakuza.
“By exposing this broad network of front companies and individuals supporting the Yamaguchi-gumi yakuza syndicate we intend to disrupt the global financial infrastructure of this illicit transnational criminal organisation,” said Sigal Mandelker, under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.
Despite their dwindling numbers, the yakuza have long been viewed by experts in international organised crime as offering key facilities to networks used for global money laundering and circulation of terrorist funds. The Treasury also identified the yakuza’s ability to profit “from nearly all aspects of sexual exploitation”.
The Treasury said the action targeted two real estate companies — Yamaki and Toyo Shinyo Jitsugyo — the first of which owns the land on which the crime group’s headquarters in Kobe stands, while the other manages the building. Both companies are involved in real estate leasing, art sales and the management of golf driving ranges: the shareholders of Yamaki, said the Treasury, are serving leaders of the Yamaguchi gang and its subsidiaries.
Consultants who specialise in protecting foreign companies from the yakuza said that the Treasury’s selection of those companies was far from a coincidence. Both companies were raided by police last year and remain at the centre of high-profile efforts by local residents in Kobe and the Japanese authorities to prevent a bloody escalation of gang warfare following a split between rival branches of the Yamaguchi-gumi in 2015.
In 2017, residents living near the headquarters obtained a court order prohibiting members of the Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi from entering the building and from displaying their gang symbols on its walls. When this was ignored, the Kobe District Court said in July this year that the crime syndicate must pay a daily fine of ¥1m if members did not vacate the premises.
The ranks of yakuza, including the Yamaguchi-gumi, have thinned visibly in recent years, according to official figures from Japan’s National Police Agency. In 2017 total members and affiliates fell for a 12th straight year to a record low of 34,500.
Although part of the decline is in line with Japan’s broader demographic issues of ageing and population shrinkage, the police are keen to link it with a crackdown on activities that began in 2011. Last week, the National Police Agency ordered regional headquarters across the country to intensify its attack on yakuza-run fraud schemes. These schemes include the notoriously successful “it’s me!” telephone scam in which fraudsters call elderly people and pretend to be grandchildren in need of urgent money transfers.
David Suzuki, the Japan head of risk advisory group Blackpeak said that the Japanese government had begun to regulate yakuza groups more efficiently, but did not actually intend to “crush” them completely as the various front companies they ran were often significant sources of local employment.
Washington’s drive to crack down on yakuza and other related groups began in 2011 under President Barack Obama. The four men named by Ofac on Tuesday as being associated with such crime syndicates brings the total to 21, along with five syndicates and two subsidiary gangs.