By ANDI JATMIKO and NINIEK KARMINI
Associated Press
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) – Authorities on the Indonesian island of Sumatra have arrested a Japanese fugitive accused of helping to steal $7.3 million intended for small businesses in Japan hurt by the coronavirus, police said.
National Police spokesman Dedi Prasetyo said Mitsuhiro Taniguchi, 47, was arrested on June 7 by immigration officers backed by local police at a house owned by a fishmonger in central Lampung.
“He told the homeowner that he wanted to invest in the fishing industry in the area,” Prasetyo said, adding that Taniguchi had been in the house for about two weeks before authorities found him.
Prasetyo said Taniguchi was wanted by Japanese police for COVID-19 subsidy fraud and left Japan for Indonesia in October 2020.
Taniguchi and a group of acquaintances allegedly submitted about 1,700 false COVID-19 relief claims. The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department believes more than 960 of those applications were subsidized, with a total estimated at $7.3 million, Prasetyo said.
He said Taniguchi, who has been wanted by Japanese police since early May, has been handed over to the immigration supervision and enforcement unit.
Wearing a mask, shorts and an immigration detainee’s orange vest, the suspect was taken by police to a news conference in the capital, Jakarta, on June 8. He had no comment.
Immigration official Nyoman Gede Surya Mataram told a news conference that days before the arrest, Japanese embassy officials informed his office that they had revoked Taniguchi’s passport and that the suspect was last seen in the Lampung area.
“His presence in Indonesia became illegal after the Japanese authorities revoked his passport,” Prasetyo said.
A diplomat at the embassy, Takayuki Miyagawa, said authorities in both countries were coordinating his deportation.
Tokyo police arrested Taniguchi’s ex-wife and their two sons on May 30 on suspicion of fraud, and placed Taniguchi on an internationally wanted list, Japan’s Mainichi Shimbun reported. It said the three allegedly defrauded the government of $22,500 in COVID-19 subsidies between June 2020 and August 2020.
The scheme was discovered in August 2020 during consultation with Tokyo police at the subsidized office. Taniguchi is believed to have fled Japan after two months, according to Japan’s Asahi Shimbun.
