Box: Response to Anti-Social Forces

- Circumstances
The Working Team on Comprehensive Measures against Funding Sources for Boryokudan (Organized Crime Groups) was established through alignment of the relevant ministries and agencies on July 21, 2006. The Working Team aims to examine comprehensive measures designed to exclude Boryokudan from public works and to cut off funding sources for Boryokudan from corporate activities. The measures are based on the “Action Plan to Create a Crime-Resistant Society,” which intends to restore the image of Japan as “the safest country in the world” (Ministerial Meeting Concerning Measures Against Crime in December 2003). The “Action Plan to Create a Crime-Resistant Society 2008” was formulated in December 2008 to take measures against Boryokudan by excluding Boryokudan and their peripheral persons from economic activities and to enhance anti-money laundering control in accordance with the result of FATF mutual evaluation. In addition, the strategy to “Make Japan the Safest Country in the World” (approved by the Cabinet in December 2013) also contains the purpose to exclude Boryokudan from corporate activities and private transactions and to enhance anti-money laundering control in accordance with the FATF recommendation.
The FSA has been working to implement the above objectives in cooperation with the relevant ministries and agencies.
- The Working Team on Comprehensive Measures against Funding Sources for Boryokudan
On June 20, 2006, the Seventh Ministerial Meeting Concerning Measures against Crime gave instructions to establish a Working Team on Comprehensive Measures against Funding Sources for Boryokudan. On July 21, 2006, the relevant ministries and agencies jointly established a Working Team based on the above ministerial instruction. (It was renamed the Working Team on Comprehensive Measures against Boryokudan in July 2007.)
- Exclusion of Boryokudan from corporate activities
(i) The Group to Exclude Boryokudan from Corporate Activities was established as a subordinate organization of the Working Team on Comprehensive Measures against Funding Sources for Boryokudan. This Group worked on formulating the basic principles and specific responses for companies to prevent damage from anti-social forces in its Guidelines on How Companies Prevent Damage from Anti-Social Forces (government guidelines). On June 19, 2007, the Guidelines were agreed upon at an executive meeting of the Ministerial Meeting Concerning Measures against Crime, and on July 3, 2007 they were reported to the ninth Ministerial Meeting Concerning Measures against Crime.
(ii) Based on the government’s policy, the FSA issued a request to the financial relevant industry group in July 2007, and revised the supervisory guidelines for each business category in March 2008. In December 2013, the FSA published measures in order to cut off relations with anti-social forces. In addition, in June 2014, the FSA amended the supervisory guidelines to promote preventive measures such as enhanced customer due diligence measures and information sharing among financial institutions belonging to the same financial group to avoid transactions with anti-social forces, and committed itself to eliminating anti-social forces from financial transactions.