St Edmund’s College Tower was funded by a donation from an organisation which was subsequently involved in multiple high-profile scandals, and from which the college is considering soliciting a new donation, Varsity can reveal.

Internal documents seen exclusively by Varsity show that the University of Cambridge conducted a review into the operations and history of Teikyo University and the Okinaga family who run it, and their involvement in a series of scandals in Japan and elsewhere from 1994 to 2010, involving political corruption, cash for university places, tax evasion, recruitment bribery, bugging and an alleged attempted cover-up of rape.

The college received a donation of £1.5 million in April 1991 from the late Dr Shoichi Okinaga, a sum described on St Edmund’s website as a “magnificent benefaction.” The money was used to build its College Tower, which was opened in 1993.

Okinaga was at the time President and Chief Executive of Teikyo University, a private university based in the Itabashi ward of Tokyo, Japan.Teikyo University has several educational projects overseas, including ones in Durham and Buckinghamshire.

The documents seen by Varsity state that St Edmund’s “would like to step up its cultivation of the Okinaga family and Teikyo University” and to “potentially seek a future donation.”

St Edmund’s Master, the Hon. Matthew Bullock, is expected to make a trip to Asia this April, visiting Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore. While in Tokyo, he will make a speech at Teikyo University to commemorate its 50th anniversary, which will be followed by another speech at a public health forum hosted by Teikyo.

Issues of concern

In November 2015, Cambridge’s Advisory Committee on Benefactions and External and Legal Affairs (ACBELA), chaired by Vice-Chancellor Leszek Borysiewicz, received a due diligence review from Richard Anthony, St Edmund’s Bursar, reporting on multiple “issues of concern” regarding the Okinaga family.

The review notes several scandals involving the Teikyo University group. It reports that, in 2002, the Japanese education ministry carried out an inspection into the university’s medical school, which discovered that the university had received 9.65 billion yen (£50.2 million) in donations from students “who eventually enrolled”. £12.8 million of that figure came in the form of donations made before students were formally admitted. The practice of making pre-admissions donations is banned by the education ministry.

In 2002, Japanese Vice-Minister of Health, Kazuaki Miyaji, resigned over allegations that he had used his influence with Teikyo University Medical School on behalf of a constituent. The constituent, who was believed to be a relative of a backer of Miyaji, had a grandson who was about to take the entrance exam for the medical school. Associates of Okinaga were understood to have instructed Miyaji to give them the prospective students’ exam number. Miyaji resigned over the allegations.

The due diligence review found that, in 1994, a professor at the affiliated Teikyo Loretto Heights University in Denver filed a lawsuit accusing Okinaga and the school administrators of conspiring to “protect their own cash flow” by stopping students from being expelled. The lawsuit also claimed that administrators had attempted to “cover up” the participation of students in the attempted rape of a foreign exchange student from Russia. The documents also record that the lawsuit alleged that a “Teikyo registrar” had accepted a car from a student in exchange for altering the student’s grades. The case was settled out of court.

Other legal cases noted within the due diligence review include a lawsuit filed by former students of Marycrest International University in Iowa against Okinaga which alleged “civil conspiracy, negligent misrepresentation, deceptive trade prices, and breach of contract.” The students claimed that Teikyo or its affiliates had collected “more than $125 million in donations, suspected by some of amounting to bribes, from the parents of students.”

Sins of the family

Other members of Okinaga’s family are also thought to have engaged in illegal and ethically dubious behaviour. In 2003, Shoichi Okinaga’s brother Yoshikazu Okinaga was given an 18-month prison sentence for a scandal involving university admissions, and also fined £180,338 by the Tokyo Tax Bureau. Okinaga’s sister, Kimie Okinaga, was fined £515,251 in 2001 for concealing income which was alleged to have come from parents of students. At the time of the respective incidents, Yoshikazu and Kimie Okinaga were high-ranking members of Teikyo Gakuen Educational Association (Teikyo-Gakuen), which manages all the Teikyo educational instiutions, including Teikyo University.

Okinaga died in 2008, but his sons are both still closely linked to Teikyo. Yoshihito Okinaga is Chairman and President of Teikyo University and Trustee and Director of the Teikyo Foundation UK. Yoshihito’s brother Shohachi Okinaga is Chairman of Teikyo-Gakuen.

In 2010, Yoshihito Okinaga was ordered to pay back £3 million in back taxes after he failed to declare £11.5 million inherited from his father, which had been held in Liechtenstein.

After the presentation of the due diligence report to the ACBELA and a discussion about it, the committee agreed that it saw no reason why St Edmund’s should not “commence cultivation” of Teikyo University and the Okinaga family, but said that the matter “should be reviewed again once more was known.”

Concerns raised within college

At a meeting of the St Edmund’s Development and Alumni Relations Committee (DARC) in November, held in the College Tower’s Okinaga Room, it was noted that the Teikyo University Group had reportedly “signalled that they want a stronger relationship with the college and asked for details on the development plans.”

Disputes were raised at the meeting, in which St Edmund’s Combination Room President Brendan Mahon noted concern “about how the acts of bribery and corruption would look outwardly.”

The college’s master said that the allegations against Teikyo University Group were now “historic.”

Dr Helen Mason, a St Edmund’s fellow, noted that “academic standing and our own reputation is the most important thing,” and expressed concern “over the implications of accepting money from the Okinaga family a second time.”

It was mentioned that both Durham and Oxford have also received donations from the Okinaga family. In 1991, Shoichi Okinaga donated £4.5 million to Wadham College, Oxford, to support its Bowra Building. Wadham also has its own Okinaga Room in his honour. Okinaga also gave £7 million to a Durham-based overseas campus of Teikyo University.

Teikyo University has links with Harvard University, where the Teikyo-Harvard Program exists as a collaboration between the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and the Department of Public Health at the Teikyo University School of Medicine.

In an interview with The Times following his donation to Wadham, referenced in the documents seen by Varsity, Okinaga said: “My position allows me to participate in the management of Oxford University…I also have the right to send two Japanese undergraduates a year to Oxford University”. Anne Lonsdale, then Director of Oxford’s External Relations Office, described Okinaga’s claims as “emphatically not true.”

A University of Cambridge spokesperson said on behalf of St Edmund’s College: “The College has not yet approached either the Teikyo University or the Okinagas for new philanthropic support. Both are fully verified and approved by the University of Cambridge Advisory Committee on Benefactions and External Legal Affairs.”

They said that any insinuation that St Edmund’s admissions process could have been influenced by a past donation was “wholly wrong.”

In the ACBELA minutes received by the DARC, St Edmund’s fellow Dr Eden Yin is reported as saying: “I think if Harvard, Oxford and Durham think it is good enough, we should not walk away from this opportunity.”

The unconfirmed minutes for a DARC meeting in January show that Bullock noted that the intention was to provide the university and St Edmund’s with “connections to Teikyo University, to further cement our bond.”

St Edmund’s Bursar, Richard Anthony, noted that the ACBELA “were not concerned by the history of the Okinaga family”, and that there was “nothing in recent family history that gave the committee concern”.

This was challenged by Mahon, who raised concerns about the prospect of “accepting money from the Okinaga family”, particularly with regards to “the reports of bribery in the admissions process”.

Mason noted that the college was in “possible negotiations with a different generation” to the one implicated in the scandal.

No effect on future intake

Bullock said that a donation, if discussed, would not affect St Edmund’s admissions processes. He said that it was “not an exchange of gifts”, and that “no pupils would be admitted into the college based on any donations”.

It was noted by Mason that “historically we had proposed admitting three PhD students a year” from Teikyo University, but that St Edmund’s had “struggled to find three who could meet the entry criteria”. It was noted that previous Teikyo students who had been admitted had a “very poor” grasp of the English language. Mason said that the college had once paid for a student to take an extra-curricular language course. It was suggested that St Edmund’s could swap fellows, Senior Members and Research Fellows with Teikyo University “rather than students.”

College Dean Alban McCoy said that he initially “felt some reservations”, but now “felt comfortable that the money had been redeemed by the new generation of the Okinaga family.”

He said that “if we decide to distance ourselves from donations because of family history, we might as well close the college.”

Anthony noted that “tax evasion is more frequently reported in Asia”, a remark which was supported by Edward Hagger, Chair of St Edmund’s Alumni Society.

The leaked minutes state that “the committee discussed that the Okinaga family money could be ‘redeemed’ by helping the college fulfill its development plan.”

St Edmund’s ongoing development plan, the first phase of which was reported in the due diligence report to cost £16 million, aims to expand the college to be able to support its student body, which has undergone “rapid growth” since 1990 – something which the report said had placed “considerable strain” on St Edmund’s physical infrastructure.

Minutes from a meeting of St Edmund’s college council on 25th January this year noted that the ACBELA “had considered the status of a potential donor and found it to be satisfactory”, and that Combination Room representatives “continued to have reservations about historic allegations of financial irregularities relating to a deceased member of the potential donor’s family”. It was proposed by a council member that the college’s ethics committee “might in due course be consulted.”

St Edmund’s DARC are scheduled to meet again today.

Sources within St Edmund’s have indicated to Varsity that there will not be any discussion of Okinaga or Teikyo University at the upcoming college meeting.