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Committee: Kyoto dumpling chain made shady business transactions

The Gyoza no Ohsho chain serves dumpling and noodle dishes
The Gyoza no Ohsho chain serves dumpling and noodle dishes

KYOTO (TR) – Following the shooting death of the president of a dumpling chain two years ago, a third-party investigative committee on Tuesday said that the company had engaged in questionable business deals decades ago but confirmed no links to organized crime, reports Sports Nippon (Mar. 30).

Over a 13-year period ending in 2006, Ohsho Food Service, which operates Gyoza no Ohsho (Gyoza King), repeatedly made payments of suspicious merit that totaled roughly 20 billion yen to an unnamed enterprise corporation, the committee revealed in a report.

The company was made aware of these payments in November of 2013. The following month, then president Takayuki Ohigashi was shot and killed by an unknown gunman near a parking lot for the company’s headquarters in Kyoto’s Yamashina Ward as he commuted to work.

In December of last year, Kyoto police announced that the results of a DNA analysis of a cigarette butt left behind at the scene of the shooting revealed a match with a gang member in the Kyushu area.

One month later, Gyoza no Ohsho established the committee to determine whether employees of the company have unknown ties to organized crime.

The committee did not include background information on the enterprise corporation. However, Naoto Watanabe, the current president, claims that it does not have ties to yakuza syndicates.

“I do not recognize that there is a connection (between the unnamed company) and anti-social forces,” said Watanabe at a press conference in Osaka on Tuesday in using a euphemism for organized crime.

According to the report, the 20 billion yen was funneled through a Gyoza no Ohsho subsidiary to the enterprise corporation in the form of loans used to purchase office and luxury residential buildings in Fukuoka City. A golf course membership was also purchased.

The majority of the amount (17 billion yen) was reported as an extraordinary loss on accounting reports.

A total of six billion yen in other payments were also made to the enterprise company but those transactions were not considered questionable by the committee.

Gyoza no Ohsho, founded in 1967, is a nationwide chain with a number of stores overseas that specializes in a variety of grilled dumplings, noodles and other dishes.