This statement was originally published in Japanese by Inclusive Solutions LLC on March 29, 2025.
For the benefit of overseas investors and parties related to PERSOL, we are releasing this official English translation.
If you discover any errors or mistranslations, please contact us.
The original Japanese text is provided below.
The following is the first whistleblowing statement issued by Inclusive Solutions LLC regarding the governance breakdown at PERSOL CAREER.
This was the very beginning of what is now known as the Hipro Scandal.
We retain and publish this document in full as an unaltered historical record.
To PERSOL CAREER employees:
If you are viewing this page, please share and escalate this information within your organization.
To those outside PERSOL CAREER:
Please share and distribute this article to help raise public awareness.
HiproTech Has Gone Completely Silent, and All Intermediary Operations Have Stopped
Inclusive Solutions LLC (“our company”) has been participating since January 2025 in a data-integration project for a certain chemical manufacturer, under the arrangement of PERSOL CAREER’s HiproTech division.
During the course of this project, serious concerns emerged among project stakeholders that PERSOL CAREER’s intermediary operations may involve activities with potential civil and criminal illegality.
Our company has repeatedly contacted PERSOL regarding these concerns.
However, as of March 29, 2025, when this notice is being published, the situation is as follows:
- We contacted Teppei Nomura, Head of HiproTech, but received no reply
- Receiving no reply from him, we escalated through the company’s official inquiry form—but again, no response at all
In light of these circumstances, and in order to protect the public interest of the industry, we are now publishing our questions openly on our corporate website.
Our inquiries point to serious violations spanning both civil and criminal law, and the harmful effects continue to spread among project stakeholders.
Below, we disclose two items:
- Our inquiry to Mr. Nomura and his subordinate managers (sent March 24, 2025, 16:20 JST)
- Our inquiry to PERSOL CAREER (sent March 28, 2025, 9:16 JST)
Our Inquiry to Mr. Nomura (Sent March 24, 2025, 16:20 JST)
To:
Teppei Nomura, Head of HiproTech Division, PERSOL CAREER
and
All members involved in the 【Client Company Name】 Data Integration Project
Dear all,
This is Abe.
It has been a while since our last correspondence.
Given the history of the project, I would like to share several important updates with all relevant parties.
As previously communicated to Mr. ○○ and Mr. ○○ of 【Client Company Name】,
our company, Inclusive Solutions LLC, is currently preparing—together with our legal counsel—to file litigation against PERSOL CAREER Inc.
We are preparing for legal action on both the civil and criminal fronts.
This is solely due to the severity of the situation, and we intend to proceed calmly and constructively.
Furthermore, in the interest of strengthening industry integrity, we plan to publish the chronology of this project on our corporate website as part of broader public-interest advocacy.
Reference (Corporate site: “For those considering business partnerships”):https://inclu-sol.versus.jp/wordpress/314-2/
The above page will include documentation of this project and its developments.
In addition, our claims—together with the supporting evidence—are summarized in the attached Excel file.
We intend to base our legal arguments on the information contained therein.
To proceed constructively, we would appreciate your response in case there are any differences in understanding between our company and PERSOL CAREER Inc.
※ Please note that, in the interest of public accountability, all future communication from your side will, in principle, be published openly across various social and web media.
※ If more time is needed for your response, please set a reasonable deadline and respond in good faith.
Sincerely,
Kosuke Abe
Inclusive Solutions LLC
ーーーーーーーーーーーーーー
Note added March 31, 2025
The URL mentioned in the above inquiry (https://inclu-sol.versus.jp/wordpress/314-2/) was subsequently relocated to:
https://inclu-sol.versus.jp/wordpress/story3
Our Inquiry to PERSOL CAREER (Sent March 28, 2025, 9:16 JST)
Thank you for contacting us.
A representative will get back to you shortly.
— Inquiry Details —
Customer Type: Corporate
Company Name: Inclusive Solutions LLC
Name: Kosuke Abe
Phone: ****
Email: ****
----------------------------------------------------------
Message:
To: Legal Department, PERSOL CAREER Inc.
This is Abe, representative of Inclusive Solutions LLC.
We are currently contacting Mr. Teppei Nomura regarding major contractual and legal issues within a HiproTech-arranged project.
However, more than four days have passed without a single response from your company.
On March 24, 2025, I sent a written notice to all relevant parties—including the end client—outlining the following concerns:
[Key Points of Our Claims — Reiterated]
・The project operations involving your company show signs of potential unauthorized legal practice (violations of the Attorney Act)
・There is reason to believe that the activities were carried out under organizational direction, raising concerns about both civil and criminal liability
Despite presenting all evidence and offering your company the opportunity to refute or clarify,
your organization has chosen to remain completely silent.
Major Risks if PERSOL CAREER Proceeds with Billing the End Client
If PERSOL CAREER issues an invoice to the end client despite these unresolved allegations, the following risks arise:
・Issuing a bill without addressing the alleged illegalities forces the end client into tacitly accepting the situation.
・As a result, the end client may be placed in a quasi-complicit position, without their knowledge or intent.
・Since your company has neither rebutted nor apologized, your silence effectively constitutes implicit acknowledgment of the facts we have raised.
For these reasons, proceeding with a billing request could significantly undermine the end client’s corporate integrity.
Therefore, we request clear answers to the following:
1.Do you intend to issue any invoice to the end client while such serious civil and criminal issues are being raised?
2.If so, on what legal basis and internal judgment will such billing be carried out?
3.When and how will PERSOL CAREER publish or explain its official position regarding this matter?
If there is no response, the narrative becomes:
“PERSOL CAREER proceeded to bill the end client without addressing serious allegations of illegality.”
Additionally:
“PERSOL CAREER is a company that, while ignoring compliance issues within its own organization, drags uninformed end clients into a complicit structure.”
We intend to raise this as a major point when publishing future updates on LinkedIn, note, and our corporate website.
Regarding the Representative Inquiry Form
We have repeatedly contacted your general inquiry form (https://www.persol-career.co.jp/contact/),
yet we have never received any reply—not even confirmation that the messages were read.
For this reason, we request at minimum:
・Confirmation that this message has been received and read
・The name of the person who has reviewed it
We request your prompt acknowledgment.
Thank you.
PERSOL CAREER Inc.
──────────────────────────────
If you have no recollection of this email or have any concerns, please contact the sender directly.
[Added April 3, 2025 – 23:30] A Suspicious Anonymous Email Resembling a “Fabricated Document”
Recently, we received a message from an entity calling itself
“HiproTech Customer Center” or “Contact Center”—
a sender with no identifiable name, demanding the deletion of this article.
The stated reason was that the content supposedly contains
“personal information” or “confidential information.”
However:
- We will not comply with such a request.
- This article is based entirely on verifiable facts.
- The purpose of publication is to serve the public interest.
We have described the suspicious circumstances of this “anonymous email” in the following update:
[Added May 3, 2025 – 21:00] Even After Reporting Everything to the Tokyo Bar Association, Complete Silence — Including From Their Corporate Counsel
As noted in the article referenced above, we issued a public question based on the email from the so-called “Customer Center” or “Contact Center,” expecting to receive a formal response from PERSOL’s corporate counsel.
However:No matter how long we waited, no attorney contacted us.
Despite publicly proclaiming that “we will have our attorney contact you,”
PERSOL CAREER’s legal counsel has also become completely unreachable.
At this point, given that:
- our public statements have already criticized PERSOL extensively
- yet neither the PR department, the Legal department, nor their external counsel has addressed the matter
it is difficult to interpret this as anything other than a severe governance failure within PERSOL CAREER,
leaving no one in the company able—or willing—to assume responsibility.
Thus, we have already filed a report with the Japan Federation of Bar Associations detailing the entire sequence of events.
PERSOL CAREER’s corporate counsel must provide an explanation to the Bar Association to clear the suspicion that they may have been facilitating unauthorized legal services as part of PERSOL’s operations.
Silence Even When Senior Managers from Global Consulting Firms Observed the Public Verification
In addition, despite widespread industry attention on social media,
and despite the fact that we conducted a public verification session together with the end client,
PERSOL CAREER still failed to provide any response.
This outcome was surprising given that:
- Many managers from major global consulting firms were closely observing the situation
- The verification was conducted openly and transparently
- The reputational risk to PERSOL CAREER was extremely high
Nevertheless, the company maintained complete silence.
For further details, please refer to the following article:
[Added May 24, 2025] — The Sudden Appearance of Yojiro Kaburagi, and the Outlook for PERSOL’s Ongoing “Silence Strategy” Ahead of the Shareholders’ Meeting
Although HiproTech had remained silent for an extended period,
the individual who abruptly appeared was not Mr. Teppei Nomura.
Instead, it was Yojiro Kaburagi, the executive overseeing the entire Hipro service organization.
However, as expected, Mr. Kaburagi was only able to comment on unrelated topics
and could not address the core allegations at all.
For a full explanation of how Mr. Kaburagi’s involvement fits into the broader structure of this scandal,
please see the following note:
The Limits of PERSOL CAREER’s Silence Strategy Are Approaching
It is likely that PERSOL CAREER will soon be unable to maintain their current strategy of silence.
The reason is straightforward:
The PERSOL Holdings Shareholders’ Meeting is scheduled for June 24, 2025.
They cannot remain silent in a forum where shareholder questions are unavoidable.
At such a venue:
- Management must respond verbally
- Governance failures cannot be hidden
- Silence itself becomes a liability
Furthermore, several upcoming public events make continued silence untenable.
For example:
- A seminar in which Teppei Nomura is scheduled to appear
- Future media coverage and brand exposure in outlets such as Nikkei (日本経済新聞)
- The need for consistent explanations across external events and this scandal
These factors make it increasingly difficult for PERSOL CAREER to maintain any internal consistency in its narrative.
The key “future events to watch,” including potential contradictions or crises,
are analyzed in detail in the following Note article:
