Photo/Illutration Agriculture minister Takamori Yoshikawa speaks at a news conference at the prime minister’s office building in October 2018. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

A former representative of a major egg production company in Hiroshima Prefecture provided cash to the then farm minister in secret, including at his office, knowing that such payments were illegal, sources close to the company said.

The former official of Akita Foods Co. made sure that nobody else was around when he handed a total of 5 million yen ($47,800) to Takamori Yoshikawa in 2018 and 2019 to seek his support for the egg production industry, according to the sources.

Yoshikawa, a Lower House member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, was agriculture minister from October 2018 to September 2019.

He received 2 million yen during a meeting with the Akita Foods representative at a Tokyo hotel in November 2018, the sources said.

The official gave another 2 million yen in March 2019 and 1 million yen in August 2019 when he met Yoshikawa at the farm minister’s office in the capital’s Kasumigaseki district, according to the sources.

“I knew at the time that I should not give the money because it is illegal,” the former representative was quoted as saying by the sources. “That is why I chose to offer the money when we were alone.”

Yoshikawa, 70, has denied receiving the money.

“I have no idea of what I am being accused of,” he told The Asahi Shimbun last month.

The company official’s first cash gift to Yoshikawa followed an international organization’s draft guidance around September 2018 that criticized Japanese egg producers’ method of raising chickens in cages. At the time, the international body was promoting animal welfare at farms.

At his meeting with Yoshikawa in November 1019, the official, a high-ranking member of an egg production industry group, requested government assistance for the industry, the sources said.

He also said he handed the cash “out of his desire to help turn around the industry, not out of self-interest.”

The 5 million yen was not listed in income and expenditure reports on political funds by political groups related to Yoshikawa.

Yoshikawa, who is serving his sixth term as a representative of a Hokkaido district, said in a statement released on Dec. 2 that he has stepped down from all posts he held in the party. The statement cited his hospitalization for an irregular heartbeat.

But he promised to cooperate with investigative authorities if they seek to interview him.

Investigators at the special unit of the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office searched the office of Akita Foods, based in Fukuyama, in July in a scandal related to former Justice Minister Katsuyuki Kawai and his wife, Anri, an Upper House member.

The couple, who represent constituencies in Hiroshima Prefecture, are charged with vote buying in connection with Anri’s campaign for the Upper House election last year.

The official with Akita Foods, 87, resigned as the company’s representative in August after staying in the position since 1966.

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