Photo/Illutration Members of the Liberal Democratic Party faction once led by former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe gather at a fund-raising party in Tokyo in May. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

Prosecutors are looking into a suspected unreported “slush fund” created by the largest faction of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party that apparently provided kickbacks to group members, sources said.

The faction, once led by former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, accumulated about 100 million yen ($676,000) in the slush fund over a five-year period, the sources said.

The faction, which has continued to use Abe’s name after his death in 2022, as well as recipient members of the funds have not reported the expenditures and income in their respective political fund reports, the sources said.

The slush fund is connected to fund-raising parties held by the Abe faction.

According to sources, Abe faction members were given quotas to fill for ticket purchases to its fund-raising parties. The size of the quotas depended on how long the members served as Diet members or if they held an LDP or faction post.

Each ticket cost 20,000 yen.

The Abe faction political fund reports have listed such ticket purchases. But the reports did not include the amounts that went beyond the quota for each faction member, the sources said.

The extra money was placed in the slush fund and was eventually paid back to the member, they said.

Investigators from the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office have questioned individuals associated with the Abe faction on a voluntary basis about the handling of the funds, sources said.

Prosecutors are looking into whether the omissions of the income and expenditures from the faction’s fund reports constitute a violation of the Political Fund Control Law.

The statute of limitations on improperly submitting political fund reports is five years.

For the five years from 2018 to 2022, during which the statute of limitations has not yet expired, the Abe faction listed a total of about 660 million yen as revenues from fund-raising parties.

But the sources said about 100 million yen beyond the members’ quotas was never included in the reports.

The Political Fund Control Law also requires such reports to list the names of anyone who buys more than 200,000-yen worth of tickets for a single fund-raising party, as well as the amounts.

A criminal complaint filed with prosecutors accuses five LDP factions of failing to properly list the names of people who purchased more than 200,000-yen worth of tickets between 2018 and 2021.

The total amount not reported came to about 40 million yen, and the Abe faction had the largest amount, at about 19 million yen, according to the complaint.

The five factions have since revised their political fund reports.

They explained that a number of different faction members had asked a single organization to buy fund-raiser tickets, but the total amount was not added up.

As a result, the initial reports did not show the aggregate amount of more than 200,000 yen paid by the one organization.

The names of those who purchased in excess of 200,000 yen in tickets were included in the revised political fund reports. But the total amount of revenues raised through the fund-raising parties was not changed.

Ryu Shionoya, head of the Abe faction, flip-flopped on the issue when speaking with reporters on Nov. 30.

He initially admitted that the kickback system was in place at the faction, but he later said the faction never created a slush fund through unreported party revenues.

Shionoya then retracted the comment about the existence of kickbacks, saying he had created a misunderstanding through an ambiguous response.

At their Dec. 1 news conferences, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno and Yasutoshi Nishimura, the economy minister, who both belong to the Abe faction, declined to comment.

Two other Cabinet ministers who also belong to the Abe faction denied ever receiving kickbacks.

Junji Suzuki, the internal affairs minister, said he never received a kickback because he has always failed to fill his ticket quota for the faction fund-raising parties.

(Takuro Chiba contributed to this article.)

Related News