Photo/Illutration Prime Minister Fumio Kishida enters the Liberal Democratic Party headquarters in Tokyo on Dec. 6. (Takeshi Iwashita)

With suspicions growing over large amounts of unreported cash from fund-raising parties, factions of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party agreed to not stage such lucrative events for the time being.

“We agreed to refrain from holding parties until we come out with measures to regain public trust,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who heads his own faction, told reporters on Dec. 6 after a meeting of party executives at the LDP headquarters.

The attendees included leaders of intraparty factions, such as Vice President Taro Aso, Secretary-General Toshimitsu Motegi and General Council Chairman Hiroshi Moriyama.

“The public trust in politics has been shaken as various points have been raised (about parties organized by LDP factions),” Kishida said. “The party must have a strong sense of crisis.”

He added that LDP factions will also refrain from holding year-end and New Year's parties.

Prosecutors are looking into suspicions that the Abe faction, the largest in the LDP, systematically created a slush fund exceeding 100 million yen ($676,000) from fund-raising parties over the past five years, according to sources.

Kishida, the LDP president, has come under increasing criticism for his stance of leaving it up to individual factions to deal with the issue.

At a meeting of the party’s board on Dec. 4, Kishida only said it is very regrettable if the public harbors doubts about the activities of LDP factions. He did not issue any specific instructions.

The Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office’s Special Investigation Department began questioning secretaries to lawmakers belonging to the Abe faction and officials of the faction on a voluntary basis over the suspected slush fund, according to sources.

But lawmakers who served as the Abe faction’s secretary-general, such as Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno and Tsuyoshi Takagi, chairman of the LDP’s Diet Affairs Committee, are reluctant to provide clear explanations.

The LDP faction led by former Secretary-General Toshihiro Nikai is also suspected of having failed to list more than 100 million yen in party ticket sales that exceeded quotas assigned to faction members in the income section of its political fund reports over the past five years.

Separately, five of the LDP’s intraparty factions, including the Abe, Nikai and Kishida factions, have corrected their political fund reports apparently after Hiroshi Kamiwaki, a professor of constitutional law at Kobe Gakuin University, said they failed to list income from fund-raising parties in criminal complaints filed with the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office.

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