Looks like being ag minister of Japan is no easy task. According to wire reports today, Takehiko Endo has resigned due to a scandal involving the misuse of farm subsidies. Endo is Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's third ag minister in the past four months.
Endo admitted over the weekend that a farm cooperative he led had received government subsidies by exaggerating weather damage to a grape harvest eight years ago. The Kyodo News Agency notes that another high-ranking bureaucrat, Vice Foreign Minister Yukiko Sakamoto also stepped down, noting irregularities in campaign funding reports in 2004 and 2005.
The Shinzo Abe government has been plagued by such scandals. He was forced to reshuffle his cabinet last week following defeat for the ruling coalition in elections for the upper house of Parliament.
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