Photo/Illutration Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno leaves the podium at the end of his afternoon news conference on Dec. 8. (Shota Tomonaga)

The fund-raising scandal that has engulfed the largest faction of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party led to speculation Hirokazu Matsuno will have to resign as chief Cabinet secretary.

Fresh revelations suggested the scandal could have major ramifications for unpopular Prime Minister Fumio Kishida as he tries to contain the crisis.

The faction once headed by former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe stands accused of financial mismanagement through annual fund-raising parties it held for which faction members were allocated quotas of tickets to sell.

According to sources, the size of the quotas depended on how long the members served as Diet members or if they held an LDP or faction post.

Amounts collected that went beyond the ticket quotas for each faction member were placed in a “slush fund,” and faction members, in turn, received kickbacks for the amounts above their quotas, the sources said.

At least 100 million yen ($690,000) was accumulated in the slush fund over a five-year period between 2018 and 2022, according to the sources.

Prosecutors are looking into possible violations of the Political Fund Control Law for failure to properly list the income and expenditures in the political fund reports of the Abe faction as well as individual lawmakers who received the kickbacks.

The Abe faction only listed amounts up to the ticket quotas as income and not the sum in the slush fund. Nor were the kickbacks paid to faction members listed as expenditures for the faction or as income for the individual lawmakers.

According to sources, six top members of the Abe faction received between 10 million and 1 million yen each.

These individuals holding important positions in both the government and the LDP are Matsuno; Koichi Hagiuda, the LDP policy chief; Yasutoshi Nishimura, the economy minister; Tsuyoshi Takagi, the chairman of the LDP’s Diet Affairs Committee; Hiroshige Seko, secretary-general of the LDP’s Upper House caucus; and Ryu Shionoya, the current head of the Abe faction.

Between 2018 and 2022, Shionoya and Hagiuda received several hundred million yen from the faction, while Takagi and Seko got about 10 million yen and Nishimura just 1 million yen or so, according to the sources.

Matsuno is believed to have received about 10 million yen. Opposition lawmakers subjected him to intense questioning in the Lower and Upper House budget committees on Dec. 8, but he only said his political organization was carefully going over his finances.

Between 2019 and 2021, Matsuno was secretary-general of the Abe faction and in that key role, he oversaw all administrative matters related to the faction.

Nishimura served as secretary-general from 2021 until 2022 and Takagi currently holds that position.

Investigative sources said prosecutors were looking into the flow of funds between the Abe faction and individual lawmakers.

Now that Matsuno’s name has been thrown into the mix, a growing number of LDP officials said it was likely only a matter of time before he resigns as chief Cabinet secretary, which makes him the government’s most senior spokesman, since it was unthinkable for someone in that position to have received kickbacks.

Others also pointed to the fact that Matsuno has not explained whether or not he received kickbacks despite facing a barrage of questions on the issue during his daily news conferences.

But on Dec. 8, Kishida defended Matsuno and said he would remain in his post.

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