Religious group denies role in 'spiritual sales'

Tomihiro Tanaka, president of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification's Japan branch, speaks at a press conference at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo on Wednesday. (Credit: The Yomiuri Shimbun)

The president of the Japan branch of the religious group widely known as the Unification Church said Wednesday that the organization "has never conducted spiritual sales, neither in the past nor at present."

So-called spiritual sales cajole people into buying goods by claiming they have supernatural benefits.