Kentaro Sonoura on Dec. 21 resigned from the Lower House and left the ruling Liberal Democratic Party amid allegations of discrepancies in his political fund reports. But he did not offer any answers to key questions.

Why was some of the money gained through fund-raising parties not listed in the reports? How was Sonoura personally involved in this irregularity? What happened to the 40 million yen ($303,000) or so believed to have been deliberately left out of his political fund reports?

The Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office is considering filing a summary indictment against Sonoura on charges of violating the Political Fund Control Law.

Lower House members convicted and fined for violating the law lose their jobs when the sentence is finalized. They are also banned from running in elections for five years, in principle.

Sonoura reportedly decided to resign from the Diet before he is convicted in hopes that prosecutors would reduce the five-year suspension period based on his “cooperation” with the investigation.

His resignation is nothing but a self-serving tactic that cannot be regarded as a sincere act of taking responsibility.

Sonoura has reportedly admitted to prosecutors that he and his tax-funded aide had conspired to underreport the political funds.

When The Asahi Shimbun first reported the underreporting, however, the lawmaker denied having received advance notice on the matter from his aide. He said he was unaware of the underreporting.

His early lies should not be forgotten.

Sonoura did not hold a news conference or use any other opportunity to speak in public to answer questions about his resignation.

Instead, he just issued a brief statement that said, “I’m responsible, to a certain extent, for the erroneous records in my political fund reports.”

He also said, “I am truly regretful,” but these words sound hollow.

Sonoura is grossly mistaken if he thinks that his resignation will end the scandal and absolve him from his responsibility to explain himself.

The LDP also has a heavy responsibility to sincerely respond to the scandal.

Sonoura’s departure from the LDP should not allow the party to pretend it is not associated with the matter.

When the vote-buying scandal involving Katsuyuki Kawai and his wife, Anri, two former LDP lawmakers from Hiroshima Prefecture, broke out, another politician elected from the prefecture questioned the party’s decision not to urge the couple to explain themselves because they had already left the party.

That politician was Fumio Kishida, now Japan’s prime minister.

Kishida, who was then chairman of the federation of LDP branches in Hiroshima Prefecture, argued that the party was obliged to call on the couple, who were both officially endorsed LDP candidates, to fulfill their responsibility to explain.

Kishida, as LDP president, should now act in line with his legitimate argument.

The Political Fund Control Law has long been criticized as being riddled with loopholes.

In particular, fund-raising parties are seen as a hotbed of illegal practices because their rules about transparency are less strict than those applied to ordinary political donations.

The criteria for requiring politicians to publish the names of people and organizations that have purchased tickets to their fund-raisers, for example, are not as rigid as those for donations.

Sonoura is not the first lawmaker to underreport income.

In 2018, The Asahi Shimbun reported a similar case involving Keiji Furuya, an LDP legislator who was then chairman of the Lower House Committee on Rules and Administration.

The report said a political fund management organization headed by Furuya had reported only 6.42 million yen out of its 11.88 million yen of income. Furuya denied the underreporting allegation without providing any convincing grounds for his claim.

Minoru Terada, another LDP lawmaker, recently resigned as internal affairs minister over allegations concerning political funds.

Reconstruction minister Kenya Akiba has come under fire for running a “family business” by using two political groups he heads to funnel political funds, described as “office rent,” to his wife and mother.

If the LDP really wants to remove public distrust of its approach to raising funds, it needs to quickly tackle this deep-rooted problem, such as revising the law for greater transparency in political fund raising.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Dec. 22