The veracity of the suspicions aside, many smelled conspiracy given the timing of the action. It was seen as a political move by defenders of the status quo to punish Horie for daring to challenge them, and to discredit him and the business practices he had come to represent, which Horie's opponents considered distasteful and "un-Japanese".

I mean, considering we have been hearing a lot of stories about karoshi & the pervasive seniority culture lately, I think I am siding on his side a lot more, given that even people feels like the yakuza did a much better job at welfare sometimes.

Indenting with spaces turns on code formatting. Please don't format text as code; it's unreadable on mobile.

Here's the quote:

> The veracity of the suspicions aside, many smelled conspiracy given the timing of the action. It was seen as a political move by defenders of the status quo to punish Horie for daring to challenge them, and to discredit him and the business practices he had come to represent, which Horie's opponents considered distasteful and "un-Japanese".

So do you assert that both the district court and the supreme court were part of a conspiracy to discredit an entrepreneur? Or merely that the prosecutor got an accurate tip-off from some hostile party?

Not completely sharing the GP's point of view, but I also think there is more than meets the eyes.

It could be a combination of most players in the field being in an illegal state in some way or another (not by accident, just that fraud is the norm) and they decided to enforce the rules on one specific company at a strategic time, while the rest of the industry hums along unscratched.