More than 100 representatives to step down following reports that officials played golf and dined with organised-crime boss

This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

More than 100 members of Japan's professional golfers' association are set to resign after revelations that two senior officials had played golf with the yakuza, Japan's mafia.

All 91 of the association's representatives will step down, including its chairman, Shizuo Mori, Jiji Press reported. Four vice-chairmen and 20 board directors will also resign.

Reports that one of the PGA's vice-chairmen and a director had played golf and dined with the head of an organised crime group came amid a crackdown on the yakuza.

The men reportedly met the underworld figure, who has not been named, between March and June this year on the southern island of Kyushu. They were expelled from the association in October.

"We take the matter very seriously," the association's current vice-chairman, Nobuyuki Abe, told Jiji. "We want to do our utmost to prevent something similar from happening again."

The association will elect new officials next month, including a chairman chosen from the board of directors.

It is not unusual for Japanese citizens, and even celebrities, to fraternise with the yakuza, a powerful network of more than 20 gangs with a combined membership of around 78,000, according to the national police agency.

But after decades of tacit acceptance, the yakuza have recently been targeted by the authorities in an attempt to weaken their grip on traditional sources of income, such as gambling, loan sharking and prostitution.

And under local ordinances introduced over the past two years, individuals and companies that knowingly do business with the yakuza are warned, and their names made public if they refuse to sever their ties to the mob.

Japan's golf administrators are not the first prominent figures to have suffered for their yakuza links.

In 2011 Shinsuke Shimada [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/aug/25/shinsuke-shimada-resigns-yakuza-links], one of Japan's best-known TV celebrities, was forced to resign after admitting he had met the leader of a group affiliated to the Yamaguchi-gumi [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/nov/26/japan.justinmccurry], the country's biggest underworld organisation.

An investigation was launched earlier this year after it emerged that Japan's biggest banks had extended millions of dollars in loans to people connected to the yakuza.