Japan's Yakuza gangsters have been getting more legit. Like Michael Corleone in "The Godfather," the mobsters have been moving into legit businesses. They get bank loans to buy their flashy cards. Bank executives at Japan Inc. are in the middle of the country's worst mob scandal in years as they explain withy they loaned millions of dollars to Japan's Yakuza mobsters. High-level crime officials in the country are now vowing to dismantle the yakuza crime syndicate.

In Japan's usually law-abiding society, the yakuza are both feared as social outcasts. Like the Italian mafia they are also celebrated in movies fanzines and manga cartoons. After a major earthquake in Kobe, Japan, in 1995, the gangster group the Yamaguchi-gumi helped distribute food.

The U.S. Treasury Department has been trying to freeze "billions of dollars annually in illicit proceeds" that the top Japanese crime groups make. Tokyo police officials have come under pressure to go after the yakuza and their money laundering.

Japanese police efforts intensified in September after Mizuho Bank admitted that it loaned money to gangsters. Their admission was followed by at least four other major lenders including Japan's biggest bank, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group.

Some of the loans were legitimate. Gangsters legally borrowed money to buy expensive items like foreign sports cars. But in some cases the items were sold on the black market and the loan was never repaid.

The Mizuho scandal got worse after executives who said they were kept in the dark about the loans admitted that they were lax in enforcing regulations.

Mizuho's CEO was punished by having to go without pay for six months. Fifty other executives will also be punished.