Allegations: The Yushin Maru ship captures a whale. Japan has been accused of bribing small countries with cash and prostitutes to help end the ban on whaling
Japan has been accused of bribing small countries with cash and prostitutes to help end the ban on whaling.
Poor nations have 'sold' their votes on the International Whaling Commission to Japan in return for millions of pounds of aid, free travel, bribes and the services of call girls for ministers, it is claimed.
The IWC will vote later this month on ending a ban on commercial whaling that has been in place for 24 years.
Backing from several small nations – including Caribbean and Pacific islands and impoverished African states – could lift the moratorium and allow the hunting of thousands of whales, including the endangered fin and sei species.
Yesterday the British Government and environmental campaigners demanded that the IWC investigates.
Many of the tiny nations – who have a vote equal in weight to countries such as Britain and France – have no interest in whaling but joined the IWC at Japan's behest because it offered huge aid payments, it is claimed.
During an undercover investigation, a senior fisheries official from Guinea said Japan gave its minister a minimum of $1,000 (£680) a day spending money during IWC meetings, with the cash handed over in envelopes.
The average annual wage in Guinea is £680. Tanzania's IWC commissioner said 'good girls' were available for ministers during all-expenses paid trips to Japan.
He said he always turned down 'massages and comfort', but said Japan had given his country £80million in fisheries aid in the past two years.
An official from the Marshall Islands, a nation in Micronesia in the Pacific, said: 'We support Japan because of what they give us.'
The claims, which Japan denies, raise serious questions about the IWC's credibility, and there were swift calls for an investigation.
Britain's minister for the marine environment, Richard Benyon, said: 'These are serious allegations and I'm sure the IWC will wish to look at them more closely.'
Dr Nicky Grandy, secretary to the commission, said: 'We have no comment to make because this has not yet been raised with member governments. I do not know if it will be.'
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