TOKYO, May 2: Bank of Japan executive director Takayuki Kamoshida, who headed a probe into corruption at the central bank, committed suicide on Saturday, police said.Kamoshida, who had been with the bank for 35 years, hanged himself at his late mother's home in central Tokyo, a police spokesman told Reuters. Police earlier said Kamoshida killed himself in his own home.Police sources said a suicide note found at the scene said: "I am exhausted. I have reached my limit." In the note, Kamoshida also apologised to his family and Bank of Japan (BOJ) officials for taking his life.Kamoshida, 58, was the latest senior financial official to commit suicide as scandals involving insider information have swirled around the venerable Bank of Japan and Ministry of Finance as well as top private Japanese banks.There has also been a string of suicides by businessmen driven to ruin by a near-recession in the country's economy. Since last June, when a top executive at Dai-Ichi Kangyobank killed himself, there havebeen six suicides, including Kamoshida's death, linked to corruption probes in Japan's financial and banking sectors.Kamoshida had never been linked to the scandals and was appointed to head the two-month-long probe because of his clean reputation. The police spokesman said Kamoshida's wife and his chauffeur found the body at about 3 AM (1800 GMT). On Friday evening, the chauffeur dropped Kamoshida at the home of his mother, who died three months ago. When the official did not leave the empty house after several hours, the chauffeur called Kamoshida's wife. "We are treating this case as a suicide," the polices pokesman said.The last top finance official to commit suicide was Yoshio Sugiyama, head of the Ministry of Finance's Small Banks Division. He hanged himself at his Tokyo home on March 12. Two officials in Sugiyama's division were arrested earlier this year on suspicion of receiving entertainment in return for giving out confidential government information.Last month, Kamoshida disciplined 98BOJ employees after the probe he headed found they accepted lavish entertainment from private firms and banks. The penal measures were criticised by Japanese media and by some in the financial and political sectors as being too mild to restore confidence in the central bank.Of the 98, 41 received reprimands, 39 received written warnings and 18 others received written statements asking them to reflect on what they had done. Two executive directors and three advisers to the BOJ governor also received 20 percent pay cuts for one to five months.Criticism of the measures grew several weeks later when a Ministry of Finance probe of an insider trading scandal handed out stiffer punishment, including forcing three officials to resign.Kamoshida, who since 1995 had been in charge of personnel management, said his investigation showed that there was no leakage of sensitive information by central bank officers. He was one of the bank's six executive directors.Kamoshida's death was a tragic rerun of aninvestigation last year into Japan's worst nuclear accident, when the head of the inquiry also committed suicide after handing down findings that blamed several close associates and criticised them for trying to cover up the incident.A fire at the Tokaimura reprocessing plant operated by the state-run Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corp exposed 37 workers to low levels of radiation.
