Sahashi's Motive

More grist for the mill as the newspapers reveal that Sahashi pilfered the employee's welfare fund when he realized he wasn't able to pay out refunds.

Investigators suspect that Sahashi used the employee's welfare fund on July 20 when it came time to pay ¥530 million in refunds.

The article shows that NOVA as a business was essentially finished by June of last year. According to the article, by June the number of students quitting NOVA outnumbered those signing up. Money from new student contracts was going directly to pay for student refunds. July 20 marked the due date for paying ¥530 million in refunds, but NOVA did not have the capital to cover this. It was at this point that Sahashi instructed Toshihiko Murata to transfer the ¥320 million from the employee's fund to a NOVA Kikaku account. The funds were combined with around ¥40 million from NOVA Kikaku, and then transferred into a NOVA bank account.

From the Daily Yomiuri:

The Osaka prefectural police believe Sahashi instructed a Nova accountant to falsify the purpose of the transfer as being "to cover refunds for students who cancelled their enrollment before finishing all programs" so he would not be blamed for the misuse of the funds.

According to investigators and sources, the mutual-aid association Shayukai withheld 1,000 yen to 3,000 yen every month from the employee salaries for welfare purposes.

The balance of the association's bank accounts, which was managed by a Nova accountant, was about 320 million yen as of July.

Nova had about 300 million yen in its bank accounts at around the same time.

Since about 500 million yen in student refunds was coming due on July 20, Sahashi and Toshihiko Murata, a former deputy manager of Nova's accounting department who was also arrested on a similar charge, are suspected of instructing the accountant to send the reserve funds to Nova through a bank account of Nova Kikaku, a Sahashi-owned Nova Corp. affiliate.

The accountant recorded in a ledger for the reserve funds that the money was loaned to Sahashi from the mutual aid association.

However, there was no document to certify that the money was loaned by contract to Sahashi by the association.

A separate Japanese article in the Yomiuri has a few extra details the English version does not. Sahashi apparently raided the employee's fund on three separate occasions, taking several millions of yen each time, and used the money to pay for medical expenses and New Year's parties.

In 2005, he instructed accounting to use the shayuukai to pay approximately ¥10 million yen to cover the expenses of a director close to Sahashi. Sahashi's request was initially refused because the money from the shayuukai fund was supposed to be used to offer condolences or gratitude. Sahashi, however, got his way by forcefully telling the accountants to, "Do as I say!"(しかし、猿橋容疑者は強い口調で「言った通りにしろ」と繰り返し、支出を認めさせたという。)

On two other occasions, sums of roughly 2.5 million and several million yen were again taken from the fund to pay for year-end parties. None of the money taken from the fund was ever returned. Apart from Sahashi, nobody knew of the status of the fund and the fund was never brought up at any of NOVA's annual general meetings.

How does Sahashi respond this? He thought the money belonged to NOVA and didn't think he was doing anything wrong(猿橋容疑者は調べに「ＮＯＶＡの金と思っていた。悪いことをしたとは思わなかった」という趣旨を供述。).

It's looking real bad for Sahashi as his motive is becoming clearer: Strapped for cash and not wanting to sacrifice his own money, he makes off with the fund without asking permission, while falsifying the reason for the bank transfer.