Word: recruit
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Japan, the Recruit scandal is raising profound questions about kinken- seiji, or money politics, and the way Japan conducts its public business. On one level the issue is simple bribery. Recruit's mercurial founder, Hiromasa Ezoe, 52, nine other businessmen and three officials of the Labor and Education ministries have been arrested for alleged bribery or violation of securities law (so far no charges have been filed against any elected politician). But on another level the question is whether Japanese politics is so blatantly suffused with the passing of cash that it is practically impossible for officeholders to avoid...
...stream of fresh disclosures, overshadowed only briefly by the death and funeral of Emperor Hirohito, has proved costly for Takeshita. Last week the popularity rating of the Takeshita Cabinet hovered around 10%, a postwar low. The Prime Minister's fall from public grace comes only partly from outrage over Recruit. The Japanese also bitterly resent a new 3% national consumption tax, part of a reform package that will eventually reduce taxes. In several recent local elections, these issues have badly hurt the L.D.P., which has been in power continuously since the party's formation in 1955. No less partisan...
...Recruit was founded as an advertising-sales agency by Ezoe in 1960 with an investment of $2,000. Acting in accordance with his favorite slogan, "Money Comes First in This World," Ezoe built the three-man shop into a corporate behemoth, branching into real estate, supercomputers and restaurant and hotel management as well as a variety of information services. Stock in the expanding conglomerate was closely held until October 1986, when shares in its real estate subsidiary, Recruit Cosmos, were publicly listed on Tokyo's over- the-counter market. Those shares became a new and virtually cost-free vehicle...
...nearly two years before going public, Ezoe and other Recruit officials commonly offered stock shares at about $20 to selected individuals, many of them in the Diet and the bureaucracy. Once the stock started trading on the open market and soared in value, many of the recipients sold their shares, reaping hefty profits. Frequently, the transactions were recorded in the names of aides or relatives...
Aides and relatives of Takeshita and his predecessor, former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, are known to have purchased shares of Recruit Cosmos -- 12,000 and 29,000 respectively. Both men deny personal involvement. Those transactions, Takeshita declared last week, were "their personal dealings, not mine...