On March 17, 2020 Tokyo District Court sentenced Mike Uchida, one of the primary offenders for the “Sekisui House land fraud incident”, to prison for 12 years.

 

A judicial decision has been made on the fraud incident where Sekisui House, a real estate professional, was deceived by a fraudulent landlord group including Mike Uchida and lost 5.55 billion yen.

 

However, the case is not yet over.

 

Where the 5.55 billion yen that Sekisui House had lost went is unknown.  There is a team investigating this possible money laundering.

 

One of the slate directors

 

　The team is in the U.S.

 

　The team’s contact for Japan is Mr. Christopher Douglas Brady.  He is one of the slate directors in the shareholder proposal dated February 14, 2020 to Sekisui House by Mr. Isami Wada, former chairman, and Mr. Fumiyasu Suguro, director.  The shareholder proposal seeks to replace the current management team of Sekisui House.

 

At the press conference of February 17, 2020, all the slate directors were present and answered questions by media reporters.

 

Mr. Brady’s name is at the top of the slate and he was introduced as Chairman and CEO of Chart Group and Chart National, the U.S. investment firms.  He was wearing an expensive looking suit.

 

He looks like a very good looking white person you will often see in Washington, D.C.  His comment drew attention at the press conference.

 

In response to a reporter’s question “Why did you accept a nomination to be a slate director?”, he answered as follows.

 

“My specialty is national security and intelligence.  The investigation report (Mr. Wada requested Sekisui House’s investigation committee to produce after the land fraud incident / the current management of Sekisui House has been resisting to disclose) shows a number of indicia of money laundering.  It often leads to terrorists’ financing, but the current management of Sekisui House has not requested the police to investigate the case in this context.

 

In the U.S., there are 16 intelligence agencies and we are working with these agencies on the Sekisui House case.

 

In order to promote a governance reform for Japanese companies, you should not allow another Olympus incident where a whistleblower was ousted.”

 

He was talking about Mr. Michael Woodford, former British CEO of Olympus who was a whistleblower and pursued to accuse its management team of accounting fraud but was ousted.

 

In the Sekisui House case, Chairman Wada (then) who was looking after the company’s overseas business, established a third-party committee to investigate the incident.  The investigation report concluded:

 

President Toshinori Abe (current Chairman) (who was responsible for domestic business and promoted the transaction) “should be heavily responsible.”

 

And Mr. Wada pursued to dismiss Mr. Abe.  However the motion to dismiss Mr. Abe did not get a majority vote and was rejected, and instead Mr. Wada was forced to resign.

 

His father was United States Secretary of the Treasury under President George H. W. Bush

 

Who is the CEO of an investment fund with specialty in national security and intelligence?

 

The land fraud was a fraud incident in Japan, and Mr. Wada’s resignation seems to have been just as a result of an internal power struggle.  Why does that relate to national security or intelligence?

 

The following comment by a member of Mr. Wada’s team answered the question.

 

“Mr. Brady is a son of Nicholas F. Brady, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury under President George H. W. Bush.”

 

He looks just like his father.  His father was Secretary of the Treasury from September 1988 to January 1993.  That Mr. Brady whose name is in “Brady Bonds” issued mostly by Latin American countries in the 1980s.

 

The ancestor who rejuvenated the Brady family is Nicholas Brady’s grandfather, Anthony Nicholas Brady.

 

In 1857, Anthony Nicholas Brady, whose family was Irish, moved from Lille, France to New York at the age of 15, and started working at a hotel.  At the age of 19 he went into business for himself, opening a tea store.

 

He went on to become a politically astute transportation magnate, and then became a dominant figure in the transportation systems of several American cities plus that of Paris.

 

He became the largest shareholder of American Tobacco Company by 1900, and a large shareholder of such companies as Thomas Edison and William C. Whitney, and became a member of the Consolidated Stock Exchange of New York.

 

　Mr. Christopher Douglas Brady’s great-grandfather is like a U.S. version of Eiichi Shibusawa and founded the basis of U.S. capitalism in late 19th century.  The Brady family is very well respected in the U.S. as “a guardian angel of money.”

 

The Chart Group that Mr. Christopher Douglas Brady founded in 1995 is an investment firm focusing on the defense industry and intelligence, and he serves as an advisor to companies in those areas.

 

Joseph Robert Wright Jr., who became Chairman of Chart National’s Advisory Board, is a big name in the telecommunications industry and a former Chairman of Intelsat, the satellite company.  He was appointed by President H.W. Bush to the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC).  Admiral Timothy J. Keating who retired in 2009 as the Commander, United States Pacific Command is one of the Advisory Board members.

 

“FBI has contacted us”

 

Why is such a pedigree gentleman from the U.S. interested in the Japanese housing company involved in the land fraud?

 

Mr. Suguro, who will become president once the shareholder proposal wins a majority vote, is the person who first contacted Mr. Brady.

 

Probably the largest reason why Mr. Brady accepted the slate director nomination was because he sensed the possibility of money laundering in the land fraud transaction.

 

After 9/11 in 2001, the U.S. started an asymmetrical war with terrorism.  In the war with somebody who is not a state, even if you kill a leader of an organization, as far as the organization  has money to fight, they continue fighting against the U.S.  It is of importance that you do not provide money to them.

 

It is like having missiles to attack money laundering via Japan, which is viewed by the western world as a loose path to terrorists.  Therefore it is very understandable that Mr. Brady became interested in Sekisui House.

 

Mike Uchida, one of the primary offenders in the land fraud incident, may not be tied to terrorists like Islamic State or Al Qaeda.

 

However, the lost money in the incident may be used to maintain or strengthen the criminal organizations and their activities, which will lead to organized crimes and terrorism.

 

That is the international society’s understanding of how money laundering works.  Therefore the U.S. is very sensitive to underground money produced from gambling, prostitution, and fraud.

 

Subsequent to Sekisui House’s announcement on March 5, 2020 of opposition to the shareholder proposal, Mr. Wada and his team held another press conference on March 11, 2020.  At the press conference, they explained that bearer’s checks, which are equivalent to cash, were used for the settlement of the large transaction of 5.55 billion yen, and that the transaction had the intermediary company named “IKUTA HOLDINGS” which was a shell company, and once again argued that the current management of Sekisui House is heavily responsible for the incident.

 

Sekisui House issued multiple bearer’s checks and Mike Uchida and others cashed all of the checks immediately on the settlement day.

 

Some professionals wonder why MUFG (Mitsubishi UFJ) Bank accommodated the settlement by Sekisui House in a manner that makes it easy for the swindlers to divide the money among them.

 

Mr. Naoki Matsuoka, the lawyer representing the plaintiff for the shareholder derivative lawsuit, said:

 

“We have been contacted by the FBI of the U.S. on the possibility of money laundering in this case.  We have not learned about the details of their investigation, but obviously they are interested.”

 

What findings will Mr. Brady and his network help come out by the general meeting of shareholders scheduled for April 23, 2020?  What decisions will the Sekisui House shareholders make based on the findings?

 

Fierce information warfare is going on in secret under tight schedule.