Beauty Who Ran up a Beastly Debt: Nui Onoue

She was the Cinderella of Japan’s economic miracle. Born into extreme poverty in Osaka, she traded on her beauty to build a fortune (накопить состояние) that made her one of Japan’s richest billionaires, and the world’s biggest individual borrower (заемщик).

Over the past four years Nui Onoue, 61, an exotic restaurateur (владелица ресторана), borrowed the staggering sum (огромная сумма) of 3,200 billion yen (£14 billion) from 12 Japan’s largest and most respected financial institutions.

Now she is in prison awaiting trial for the biggest fraud in Japanese history. Her debts (долги) reported exceeded £1.7 billion and bankers say she is probably bankrupt (банкрот). So far three bankers have been arrested for allegedly helping her forge certificates of deposit and other instruments to help cover her debts (выплатить долг), which soared (увеличился) when the stock marked crashed (падение фондовой биржи) last October.

Yo Kurosawa, the president of Japan’s most prestigious and revered (уважаемый) private bank, the Industrial Bank of Japan (IBJ), told a parliamentary committee (парламентский комитет) three weeks ago that he had seen nothing wrong in giving her huge loans. The Japanese press has reported that he knew Onoue and that he had dined at her restaurant.

She is the largest individual stockholder of IBJ, Dai-Ichi Kangyo, the world’s largest bank, and NTT, which has the largest public listing of any company in the world. Exactly how she managed to borrow so much money has not been adequately explained, but it reflects badly on the banks that lent money (lend ссужать) to her, particularly on IBJ. ‘IBJ’ credit approval is the strictest in Japan, ‘said one banker. ‘Anyone who can get a loan from IBJ gets the highest credit rating from other banks. Nobody would question her credentials (рекомендации)’.

Onoue started her career as a teenager working in a textile factory. An early marriage soon ended in divorce, and she went to work as a waitress. Eventually she bought her own restaurant and built it into a £4 m-a-year business.

She appears to have started her borrowing binge in 1987 by walking into a branch of IBJ and putting down more that £4 m for bank bonds. She used the bonds to borrow money from IBJ which she invested in bank shares. The process was repeated with other leading banks, such as Sumitomo and Daiwa, until she was trading 1 m shares a day. Onoue insisted she was not a gambler, and invested only in the safest and bluest of chips.

But when the market fell nearly 50 per cent (После падения курса акций примерно на 50%) last October, the banks took fright and began cutting back on her loans. At this point, the police claim, she and her confederates (сообщники) resorted (прибегли) to ‘clumsy’ forgeries of £1.5 billion of certificates of deposit. These were used to secure loans (предоставить обеспечение по ссуде) from new creditors to help pay off her debts of £4 billion. Most of the fakes were issued by the manager (now under arrest) of an obscure credit union (кредитный союз).

According to the Japanese news agency Kyodo she borrowed £61.7 m in 1986, £246 m in 1987, £986 m in 1988, £4.7 billion in 1989 and 5.9 billion in 1990. A further £2.1 billion was borrowed this year.

5. Which of the crimes might each of these people be charged with?

1. A camper (турист) who spent a night on a farmer’s land without asking permission.

2. A businessman who diverted funds (направлять финансовые ресурсы на другие цели) from the account (счет) of the company he worked for into his own personal account.

4. A witness who gave false evidence in court.