Photo/Illutration Prime Minister Shinzo Abe welcomes guests to the cherry blossom viewing event held in April 2019 at Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden in Tokyo. (Pool)

Aides to former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe deliberately concealed payments for a hotel reception held for his supporters because they were aware of the legal complications of such parties, according to court records and statements.

Hiroyuki Haikawa, a former state-paid aide to Abe, received a summary indictment for failing to include the payments in political fund reports.

Haikawa paid a fine of 1 million yen ($7,650), thus avoiding an open criminal trial.

The Asahi Shimbun submitted an information disclosure request with prosecutors for relevant documents concerning hotel parties held in Tokyo on the eve of cherry blossom viewing parties hosted by Abe.

Haikawa was in charge of Abe’s office in his home constituency of Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi Prefecture, as well as head of a support group for Abe.

Based on responses given by Haikawa and another aide working in Abe’s Tokyo office, Haikawa first proposed holding the hotel reception around February 2013 after executives of the support group asked for such a party.

The support group that Haikawa headed served as host of the reception, but negotiations with the Tokyo hotel about the event were handled by Abe’s Tokyo office.

The Tokyo aide said he suggested setting the reception fee for supporters at 5,000 yen but added that there was a high possibility that the support group would have to chip in because such a low fee could not cover the total cost of the event.

However, the Tokyo aide knew that if the support group did cover the difference, that payment would be considered a donation to the attending supporters under the Public Offices Election Law.

Yet including that payment in the annual political fund report would likely stir controversy in the media.

The Tokyo aide could not find a reasonable solution to the problem and told prosecutors that because Haikawa was in charge of compiling the political fund report for the support group, the matter should be left up to him.

For his part, Haikawa told prosecutors that he was furious at the Tokyo office for effectively passing the buck to him.

As the head of the Shimonoseki support group, Haikawa was always careful about payments for local receptions, ensuring there were no infringements on the ban on donations to supporters.

But Haikawa realized the party-covering payment from the support group could never be included in the political fund report, so he went along with the suggestion from the Tokyo office.

The Tokyo aide mentioned a December 2012 article by The Asahi Shimbun about how the local Liberal Democratic Party branch that Abe headed had used political funds for wining and dining at a Shimonoseki club.

Abe severely scolded Haikawa over the incident.

Concerns about media attention over payments persisted.

But no decision was made about the Tokyo hotel reception payments because both Haikawa and the Tokyo office felt they could leave the matter up to the other side.

As a result, although the hotel receptions were held every year from 2013 until 2019, none of the political fund reports for the support group headed by Haikawa had an entry about the payment from the support group during that period.

In the summary indictment, Haikawa was charged with failing to include the payment entries for the four years from 2016 until 2019 for which the statute of limitations had not expired.

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