Masked Companies - Front Business in Depth - 2025

Masked Companies - Front Business in Depth - 2025

Gang front businesses are now difficult to spot at first glance. They exist, blending into the everyday landscape, in coffee shops, general stores, lakeside boat ramps, and even cake stores in department stores. Gone are the days of carrying a surrogate crest; they wear a mask of legitimacy under the guise of a clean face. The managers are ostensibly katagi (professional businessmen), while the people behind the scenes are the union leaders who move the money. By separating the name from the reality of the business, they are able to evade detection by the police.

According to the police list, the shadow of the gangs covers every field, from civil engineering, real estate, and finance to food and beverage, entertainment, transportation, and industrial waste disposal. The types of businesses that were once called "general assemblymen" or "corporate ragamuffins" have now morphed into more benign industries such as management consulting and general merchandise sales. Front companies are not just a source of funds, but also a money laundering apparatus and a base for maintaining influence in society.

When the Gang Exclusion Ordinance was enacted nationwide in 2011, they were eliminated from corporate transactions and they went into the background. But that was not the end of the story. Rather, more elaborate mechanisms were created to slip through the anti-corporate checks. The real controlling party is concealed under several names and acts as a sound company on the contract. The structure, in which the gangsters themselves remained out of the public eye and left the transactions to the katagi, spread through the web of economic society.

This new form of front business does not completely erase the shadow of crime. The flow of funds is complicated and branching out, leading to fraudulent groups and special fraud operations. The boundaries between illegal and legal have become blurred, and economic activity that does not appear in police statistics is swelling underground. They who once flaunted their surrogate crests now wear suits, manipulate bank accounts, and lurk in the veins of the economy. The power that stirs beneath their masks has infiltrated everyday life without anyone's knowledge.