TOKYO (TR) – The Supreme Court last week upheld a prison sentence previously handed to the boss of the Kudo-kai criminal syndicate for tax evasion, reports Kyodo News (Feb. 18).
On February 16, the third petty bench of the court rejected the appeal by Satoru Nomura, the 74-year-old boss, ruling that he evaded 320 million yen in income taxes.
In the first two rulings, Nomura was handed a three-year prison term and a fine of 80 million yen.
According to those rulings, Nomura and Masayoshi Yamanaka, a 79-year-old member of the same gang, worked together to conceal 890 million yen in jonokin — or money funneled to upper-level members of the gang from underlings — between 2010 and 2014.
The “Money Man”
Yamanaka is known as the “Money Man” of the Kudo-kai. Also on February 16, the Supreme Court rejected the appeal by Yamanaka, who had been sentenced by a lower court to two years and six months in prison.
Based in Kitakyushu City, Fukuoka Prefecture, the Kudo-kai is one of Japan’s most violent gangs.
Tax evasion is far from Nomura’s only legal problem. On January 14, prosecutors asked the Fukuoka District Court to hand down the death sentence to Nomura over four violent incidents, one of which resulted in the death of a victim.
