Japan ruling party’s largest faction suspected of misusing funds for elections: Report

ANKARA

Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s (LDP) largest faction is suspected of misusing revenue from fundraising parties “to support upper house election campaigns for years,” local media reported on Saturday.


"The faction had returned to lawmakers running for House of Councillors elections all revenue from sales of fundraising tickets they sold for the group without declaring the income in political funds reports, intending to use them as secret funds," a Kyodo news agency report said, citing a source “familiar with the matter.”

Japanese prosecutors have already launched a probe and raided the offices of two major ruling party factions in connection to a fundraising scandal earlier this week.

“According to allegations, LDP factions have traditionally set quotas for lawmakers on the sale of party tickets, and, in some groups, the extra funds are passed back to them as a type of commission if they surpass their targets,” according to the news agency.

It said that the faction allegedly failed to report the extra funds as income in the group’s political funding reports, did not indicate that those funds were passed back to lawmakers as expenditures and the lawmakers also did not report receiving money.

The slush funds at the faction are believed to be around 500 million yen ($3.5 million).

Last week, Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida removed a group of ministers from his Cabinet, and among those who resigned are Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno, Economy Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura, Farm Minister Ichiro Miyashita, and Internal Affairs Minister Junji Suzuki.

This came after the political funding scandal surfaced which has dimmed public approval of the government to its lowest level since Kishida took office in October 2021.

Five senior vice ministers and a parliamentary vice minister also stepped down.

*Writing by Islamuddin Sajid