Japanese yakuza are recruiting homeless people to build facilities for 2020 Tokyo Olympics

Six members of one of Japan’s most notorious underworld groups have been arrested for illegally brokering the hiring of labourers for the construction industry, which is suffering a chronic shortage of workers as it attempts to meet the schedule for facilities for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.

Police said the six men were arrested on Wednesday and included Mitsunobu Hiroo, the 69-year-old head of a gang with links to the Tokyo-based Kyokuto-kai crime syndicate. The Kyokuto-kai was designated as a violent criminal organisation in 1993, although it still operates in at least 14 prefectures.