Japan's Professional Golfers Association Leaders To Resign Amid Yakuza Scandal

The leadership of Japan's Professional Golfers Association "will resign en masse after two of its executives were found to have played golf and socialised with an underworld boss," according to the AFP. The Jiji Press news agency said that "the PGA's policy board decided Wednesday on the mass resignation, to be followed by the election of new representatives in January." All the 91 PGA representatives, including Chair Shizuo Mori, four vice chairmen and some 20 board directors, "will voluntarily step down to help restore public trust in the body." Between March and June this year, then-PGA Vice Chair Shinsaku Maeda, 61, and then-Board Dir Tadayoshi Bando, 67, "were found to have played golf and dined with the head of a yakuza organised crime group in the southern island of Kyushu." The PGA "bars its representatives from socialising with organised crime syndicates" (AFP, 12/18).