Photo/Illutration Kentaro Sonoura speaks at a news conference on Nov. 30. (Hiroyuki Yamamoto)

Prosecutors have questioned the top aide of a ruling party lawmaker in connection with about 40 million yen ($288,000) in unreported revenues gained through fund-raising parties over three years, sources said.

The questioning, which started in autumn, was conducted on a voluntary basis by officials with the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office.

The aide is in charge of accounting at a fund management organization for Kentaro Sonoura, 50, a Liberal Democratic Party member who represents a Lower House district in Chiba Prefecture.

Sonoura on Nov. 30 met with reporters and apologized for the lax manner in which the reports were put together. But he denied any personal involvement on his part.

While saying his office did not handle the matter in the most appropriate way, he admitted that he did not look very closely at the reports and left everything up to his aide.

According to the sources, the aide has admitted that revenues were routinely underreported, and that Sonoura was told after each fund-raising party that the total amount gained would not be included in the political fund report.

The aide told prosecutors that some expenditures were also excluded from the reports, the sources said.

Sonoura, in response to questions from The Asahi Shimbun, said he recently learned that revenues from the fund-raising parties had been underreported.

But he denied that he was informed beforehand.

“I was shown the annual reports for two or three years and was told these were the amounts that we will submit. I said that ‘I understand,’” Sonoura said. “Since that ended the matter, I did not know if the figures matched the actual amounts.”

He also said he did not feel there was any failure to include certain items or that figures were falsified.

The lawmaker said an accounting firm had been given the bank books and other records of the group. The firm was asked to check those documents against what was included in the political fund reports, he said.

Failing to include revenues or making false entries in political fund reports are violations of the Political Fund Control Law. Those found guilty face maximum penalties of five-year prison terms or a 1-million-yen fine.

The statute of limitations for those violations is five years, so prosecutors are analyzing the political fund reports for the years between 2017 and 2021.

The political fund reports submitted by Sonoura’s organization listed total revenues of 43.62 million yen from six fund-raising parties between 2018 and 2020.

Reports for another Sonoura support group, which he does not head and that has the same aide in charge of accounting also listed about 10 million yen in revenues from three fund-raising parties between 2017 and 2019.

The fund management organization headed by Sonoura had revised its political fund report in March 2021 because all revenues from a fund-raising party held in April 2019 were not included.

Sonoura and the aide were the subject of criminal complaints submitted in September 2021 over the revision of the report.

Sonoura, who first won a Lower House seat in 2005 and is now in his fifth term, worked as a reporter for The Yomiuri Shimbun before becoming an aide to Taro Aso, now the LDP vice president.

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