All 47 prefectural labor offices found to have engaged in dubious accounting

TOKYO — All 47 prefectural labor bureaus under the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare are found to have engaged in some form of irregular accounting practices such as logging expenses for staff travel never made, investigations by the government's Board of Audit showed Saturday.

The bureaus misappropriated a total of more than 7 billion yen in the six years through fiscal 2004, they showed. Of the total amount of misappropriated funds, about 300 million yen was determined to be the result of falsifying accounts by way of appropriating overtime work benefits when no such work was done or pretending to hire part-time workers, the board said.