Japanese gangsters are poised for a credit crunch after the country’s top banking lobby declared it was fed up with yakuza members defaulting on car and small-business loans and would work with police to cut them off.
The move comes amid a scandal engulfing Mizuho, Japan’s second-biggest financial group by assets, which said last month that it had supplied gang members with loans via Orient Corp, a consumer-finance affiliate.
Takeshi Kunibe, chairman of the Japanese Bankers Association, told reporters yesterday that the group would team up with the National Police Agency to share information, so that gangsters seeking funds from about 200 domestic and foreign banks were cut off at the source.