A Chinese businessman who once was an official with the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo has been arrested in Japan for allegedly defrauding the Japanese government’s COVID-19 relief funds.
Xu Yaohua, 62, previously served as secretary of the Chinese Embassy in Japan during the 1980s and has since been running a local restaurant group.
The Public Security Bureau of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department confirmed with The Epoch Times on Feb. 9 that they arrested Xu and a 28-year-old staffer, Keita Kojima.
The pair allegedly submitted the applications from November 2020 to July 2022 and obtained about 3.75 million yen (about $24,700), which they deposited 13 installments into Kojima’s bank accounts.
Xu graduated from a university in central China’s Wuhan city and worked at the Chinese Embassy in Japan from 1986 to 1989. After his stint, he stayed in Japan and began a food business.
Until at least 2023, Xu was the director of the Japan Hubei Chamber of Commerce, which has close relationships with Chinese officials, according to Chinese media reports. It organized trips for members to Hubei Province and welcomed a number of Chinese provincial and city officials to Japan, Chinese media reports said.
Xu was featured on Chinese state media in 2020 for leading the chamber in sending medical masks to Wuhan shortly after the city was locked down because of the pandemic. He was honored as one of 100 outstanding businessmen from Hubei in 2021, Chinese media reported.
One of Xu’s restaurants, Gozenbo, is just a few blocks from the Chinese embassy in Japan.
In February last year, Japanese police also arrested two Chinese women for COVID-19 aid fraud. The two were involved in a Japanese branch of a Chinese association for people from Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian Province in southeastern China. The building where the association is located was raided in May 2023, after authorities identified it as an illegal overseas Chinese police station. One of the women also worked as the secretary for a Japanese legislator.
