THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
September 29, 2023 at 17:16 JST
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida heads to his office on the morning of Sept. 29. (Koichi Ueda)
Discrepancies were found in a political fund report submitted by an organization headed by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida for donations received in 2021, but for a paltry amount, just several hundred thousand yen.
The dates for donations to the Hiroshima branch of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party that Kishida heads differed from those included in the political fund report of the LDP-affiliated group that made the donations.
The other political group is the Hiroshima branch of a league of judo therapists. In its 2021 political fund report, the branch lists a donation of 100,000 yen ($671) to Kishida on Sept. 21 and another 100,000-yen donation to Kishida on Oct. 4. A third donation of 200,000 yen was made on Oct. 18 to the LDP branch headed by Kishida.
The 2021 political fund report for the LDP branch headed by Kishida lists the donations from the judo therapists league branch for October, but not the one made in September.
The Political Fund Control Law does not ban donations from political groups to individual lawmakers.
Other date discrepancies are also evident for donations made by the LDP branch to Kishida. A donation of 5 million yen is listed as having been made on Oct. 12, 2021. But in the financial report submitted by Kishida in line with the 2021 Lower House election, the donation is listed as having been received on Oct. 19. A date discrepancy also arose over another transfer of 6.5 million yen between political groups both linked with the prime minister.
At his Sept. 29 news conference, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said, “It was a clerical error and I understand that the prime minister has instructed his office staff to immediately correct the mistakes.”
(This article was written by Haruka Ono and Rikuri Kuroda.)
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