Photo/Illutration Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe apologizes at the start of the Dec. 25 Upper House Rules and Administration Committee session. (Koichi Ueda)

Questions remain about former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's finances even after he apologized Dec. 25 at two Diet committees quizzing him about the failure of his support group to record payments for hotel receptions.

Abe appeared before the Rules and Administration Committees of the two chambers of the Diet in the aftermath of a summary indictment against his former top aide for failing to include the payments in annual political fund reports submitted by the support group the official headed.

The Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office determined that the support group paid a total of 7.08 million yen ($68,500) over a four-year period until 2019 to make up for the difference between what guests at the hotel reception paid and the actual cost of hosting the functions.

When Abe was asked where the money came from, he explained that he withdrew funds from his savings account and left them with the support group.

But in revised annual political fund reports submitted by the support group on Dec. 23, there is no evidence to support Abe’s claim.

The support group revised reports for the three years until 2019. Over that period, the support group paid out about 6 million yen for the hotel receptions.

But if Abe had left funds with the support group, the revised political fund reports should have stated that the former prime minister had “donated” a certain amount to the support group.

But there was no entry of that kind in any of the reports for the three years in question.

However, for the support group’s 2017 report, it revised the amount carried over from the previous year and increased the amount by 6 million yen, the exact amount the support group paid to the hotel for the receptions.

If Abe was correct in his recollections, there should have been an entry about that donation for the political fund reports prior to 2017.

Because such reports only need to be stored for three years and there was no need for the support group to revise its reports for the years before 2017, there is no way of confirming if it actually listed Abe’s donation in any report.

Tomoko Tamura, an Upper House member with the opposition Japanese Communist Party, said it was difficult to determine where the support group got the money to pay for the hotel receptions and she asked Abe to submit documents that would clarify the picture.

But Abe only explained that revisions to the political fund reports were made to the extent that records still existed.

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