TOKYO (TR) – Police have arrested an upper-lever member of a criminal syndicate affiliated with the Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi for damaging an office of a rival gang in Hokkaido Prefecture last year, reports Hokkaido Cultural Broadcasting (Apr. 4).
Osama Tsukada, a 44-year-old executive with the Kosho-kai, allegedly conspired with two other persons to throw a fire extinguisher through the window of an office of the Kyokudo-kai, a syndicate affiliated with the Yamaguchi-gumi, in Asahikawa City on March 28, 2016.
Officers from the Asahikawa Police Station arriving at the scene found a hole with a diameter of 60 centimeters in the window, according to the Sankei Shimbun (Mar. 28, 2016). The office had been unoccupied for several days. There were no injuries in the incident, police said.
On Tuesday, Tsukada turned himself over to officers at the Ueno Police Station in Tokyo’s Taito Ward. He was subsequently arrested on suspicion of violating an organized crime law for ordering the attack.
The Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi formed as a rival to the Yamaguchi-gumi in 2015. In investigating the incident last year, police suspected that it was connected to an ongoing feud between the two organized crime groups. On the evening before the damage was found, a brief skirmish took place between members of the Kyokudo-kai and the Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi on a road in Asahikawa.
