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Members of the Cabinet, including Prime Minister Taro Aso, own an average of 141.28 million yen in family assets, the government has announced.
The figure is 24.33 million yen more than the average of the Cabinet of his predecessor Yasuo Fukuda.
The average amount of personal wealth that the prime minister and his 17 Cabinet members have in their own names came to 118.29 million yen.
Of the 18, Aso is the second wealthiest with 455.48 million yen in assets he owns in his own name and the names of his family members he lives with, following Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Kunio Hatoyama, who is worth 764.6 million yen.
Most of Aso's assets are real estate properties, including his homes in Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, and in his hometown Iizuka, Fukuoka Prefecture, worth a total of 415.03 million yen.
If real estate properties are calculated according to the standards on which fixed property tax is evaluated, Aso is the second richest prime minister in history, following former Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa whose assets were disclosed in 1993.
Five of the 18 Cabinet ministers including Aso have more than 100 million yen in family assets.
The government calculated the amounts of assets that Cabinet ministers have in their own name and the names of family members that they live with by adding the values of bank deposits, securities -- excluding shares -- and real estate properties.
However, the figure is far from reality because the real estate values were not calculated on current market prices, and because the amounts of deposits in ordinary and checking accounts were excluded.
(Mainichi Japan) October 25, 2008
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