SASEBO NAVAL BASE, Japan — Police will investigate a Japanese Defense Facilities Administration Agency claim that there is something fishy about the number of fishing boats reporting losses in revenue due to U.S. Navy operations near Sasebo Naval Base.
The DFAA’s complaint — alleging some of the agency’s own employees conspired with the Sasebo City Fishery Association to bilk them out of millions of yen — was accepted Wednesday and will be investigated for possible fraud, a Nagasaki Prefectural Police spokesman said.
Members of the fishery association, with the help of senior and retired officials of DFAA Fukuoka Bureau, inflated the number of fishing boats entitled to receive the compensation that the Japanese government pays for fishing losses due to Navy operations, the complaint stated.
The government pays 13 million yen (about $110,000) every year to seven association fishermen due to the restricted fishing access, according to a DFAA spokesman.
Each of the seven has a fleet of about four or five “roll-netting” fishing boats. The association claimed losses for all seven fishermen, but four have been inactive for more than a decade, said Atsunori Kashiwaya, chief of the Facilities and Planning Office of DFAA’s Fukuoka bureau.
Sasebo Naval Base does not anticipate participating in the case, said base spokesman Charles Howard.
