LEAD: Koizumi, Maehara remain at odds over alleged Livedoor e-mail

Japan Policy & Politics, Feb 27, 2006

TOKYO, Feb. 22 Kyodo

(EDS: ADDING LIVEDOOR COMMENTS)

Japan's ruling and opposition leaders remained at loggerheads Wednesday over whether parliament should exercise its investigative powers to look into suspected links between the Liberal Democratic Party and Internet firm Livedoor Co. after the opposition Democratic Party of Japan failed to table new evidence.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, as LDP president, said the DPJ should first prove the authenticity of an e-mail in which the DPJ claims Livedoor founder Takafumi Horie ordered money to be transferred to LDP Secretary General Tsutomu Takebe's son.

DPJ President Seiji Maehara said his party would provide relevant bank account information only after the ruling coalition agrees to exercise the Diet's investigative powers.

''We have various kinds of information that prove there have been monetary exchanges,'' Maehara said in a 45-minute debate between the two party leaders in parliament.

But Koizumi said, ''If you present evidence to prove it (the e-mail) is credible, then one wouldn't even need to exercise the investigative powers.''

The DPJ alleges that Horie ordered in a company e-mail that 30 million yen be transferred to Takebe's younger son as a fee for electoral consultancy work.

Horie, then president of Livedoor, ran unsuccessfully in last year's general election for the House of Representatives as an LDP-backed independent.

Livedoor President Kozo Hiramatsu said he has ''not been informed of any such money transfer.''

The statement was made at a news conference following the arrest of Livedoor Representative Director Fumito Kumagai earlier Wednesday.

Hiramatsu, who took over from Horie as president after his arrest last month, said the company had conducted an in-house investigation after the allegations about Kumagai emerged.

Prosecutors arrested Kumagai and served fresh arrest warrants on Horie and three other former top executives Wednesday on suspicion that they were involved in alleged accounting fraud by Livedoor in 2004.