Photo/Illutration Katsuyuki Kawai and his wife, Anri, celebrate his winning another Lower House term in 2014. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

HIROSHIMA--Twenty-five former local politicians and political operatives indicted in a bribery scandal that led to the conviction of a former justice minister received summary court orders to pay fines ranging from 4 million yen ($33,000) to 200,000 yen.

The individuals will lose the right to run in future elections for up to five years once the orders are finalized.

That has led some of the indicted individuals to consider fighting the case rather than accept the fines.

One former local politician pointed out the five-year period would prevent those caught up in the scandal from running in elections to be held in 2023 and 2027.

“My career as a politician would effectively end if I sat out two straight elections,” the ex-politician said.

The indictments stem from the huge vote-buying scandal orchestrated by former Justice Minister Katsuyuki Kawai to help his wife, Anri, win a Diet seat in the 2019 Upper House election.

The Kawais were both convicted of vote-buying in the election and forced to vacate their seats in the Diet.

Katsuyuki received a three-year prison sentence for distributing a total of 28.71 million yen to 100 people, while his wife was given a suspended sentence for handing out a total of 1.6 million yen to four prefectural assembly members.

Prosecutors in July 2021 said charges would not be brought against those 100 individuals because the recipients played only a “passive” role in the scandal.

However, a prosecution inquest panel in January concluded that 35 of those 100 individuals should be indicted for violating the Public Offices Election Law on grounds they accepted larger bundles of cash, did not return the money, or refused to resign after the scandal came to light.

In March, the Hiroshima District Public Prosecutors Office handed out summary indictments to 25 of those individuals and indicted nine others who refused to go along with the summary indictments. The nine will now face a regular court trial over the vote-buying charge.

The Hiroshima District Court said that seven summary courts in the prefecture issued the summary orders to a former mayor, nine former prefectural assembly members, 10 former municipal assembly members, a former aide to a Diet member and four former campaign staff members.

Those who received the summary orders have 14 days to decide either to pay the fine or reject the order and fight the case in court.

Seventeen of the 25 individuals all resigned their elective offices before receiving the summary order.

One of them complained that five years was too long to be prohibited from running for public office and was considering fighting the case in court.

A former campaign staff member who is also mulling what to do said, “I cooperated with investigators from the very start, but the contents of the summary order were unforgiving.”

(This article was written by Kazutaka Toda, Tabito Fukutomi and Takahiro Okubo.)

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