Photo/Illutration Members of a panel under the Consumer Affairs Agency conduct an online meeting on Oct. 4 regarding the Unification Church. (Noriyuki Kaneta)

A consumer affairs panel will call for a government investigation into the dubious sales and donation-collection practices of the Unification Church, an unprecedented move that could eventually dissolve the religious organization, sources said.

The expert committee under the Consumer Affairs Agency plans to submit its recommendations for the investigation to Taro Kono, the consumer affairs minister, in the near future, according to the sources.

The experts agreed that authorities should investigate the church, now officially called the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, under the Religious Corporations Law, the sources said.

If the church is found to have violated the law, it could lose its corporation status and be forced to dissolve.

The panel found a number of court rulings in civil lawsuits that have recognized organizational responsibility on the part of the Unification Church for dubious sales practices and requests for large donations from followers.

Until now, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and the Cultural Affairs Agency, which oversees religious corporations, have taken a cautious stance about moving against the Unification Church.

Dissolution orders are rare in Japan. Supporters of the church said it has not been criminally convicted of breaking any law.

Criticism of the church’s activities resurfaced after the suspected killer of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in July told investigators about his grudge against the religious organization.

The suspect said his mother donated almost all of the family’s money to the church, and that he targeted Abe because of his ties to the group.

According to the sources, the draft of the panel’s recommendation points out that the Unification Church has violated legal provisions and taken action that seriously damaged public welfare.

The draft also says the church has conducted activities that go well beyond the objectives of a religious corporation.

Provisions in the Religious Corporations Law cite such actions as applicable reasons for dissolving a religious corporation.

The panel’s recommendation will likely call for the exercise of the authority laid out in the law to ask the Unification Church to submit reports as well as question church officials about past actions.

The law states that reports and questioning of religious corporation officials should only be conducted if there are reasons to suspect factors that warrant a dissolution of the organization.

An actual dissolution order would be issued by a court on the request of the Cultural Affairs Agency.

According to the agency, only two dissolution orders have been issued in Japan, and they were made because of legal violations committed by the organizations.

One was the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult, which carried out the deadly 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system and other crimes.

The other was the Myokakuji temple group, whose leader and executives were accused of defrauding followers through exorbitant fees paid for memorial services for departed souls.

In both cases, no government investigation was conducted before the courts made their dissolution rulings.

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