Yakuza cash in supplying workers for nuclear clean-up
Authorities turn a blind eye as gangsters supply temporary workers for contaminated plant
Japanese criminal groups are pocketing millions of yen in government funds for supplying workers to help clear up areas contaminated with radiation from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, according to an expert on the Yakuza gangs.
Far from clamping down on the practice, authorities are turning a blind eye because it's the only way that the work will ever get done, believes Jake Adelstein, author of Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan and an expert on Japan's underworld.
"Nothing is being done about it because there is no one else who is willing to do this sort of work," Adelstein said.
Nothing is being done about it because there is no one else who is willing to do this sort of work
"You would have to be crazy to agree to work in those sorts of conditions, especially when we hear of another problem or crisis at the plant virtually every day."
In early March, the Yamagata District Court handed down a suspended eight-month prison sentence to a senior member of an underworld group for sending day labourers to decontamination projects in the town of Date, in Fukushima prefecture, without a licence.
The court opted for the suspended term because the man claimed to have resigned from his yakuza group.
The case highlighted just how lax background checks on the firms that supply the temporary workers are, as well as the full-time workers hired by Tokyo Electric Power at its Fukushima facility.