Photo/Illutration Prime Minister Fumio Kishida meets with reporters on Dec. 13. (Takeshi Iwashita)

Prosecutors are looking into suspicions that the ruling party faction recently headed by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida failed to list tens of millions of yen in its political fund reports, sources said.

The unreported income came from sales of tickets to the faction’s fund-raising parties over the past five years, the sources said.

After the suspicions surfaced, Kishida told reporters Dec. 13 that he instructed the faction’s secretariat to thoroughly examine the issue, provide a full explanation to relevant authorities and respond appropriately if corrections are needed.

Irregularities and dodgy practices concerning political fund reports have rocked various factions in the Liberal Democratic Party, particularly the one once headed by former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

After the fund scandal widened, Kishida, who became a faction leader in 2012, resigned as its chief and left the group on Dec. 7.

Since then, Kishida has planned to remove members of the Abe faction, the largest in the LDP, from high-level positions in his Cabinet and the ruling party, sources said.

But now, the prime minister’s former faction is also under the investigation spotlight.

The faction, the fourth largest in the LDP, recorded a total of about 840 million yen ($5.78 million) in income from fund-raising parties in its political fund income and expenditure reports between 2018 and 2022.

The sources said the reports failed to list tens of millions of yen in revenues from party tickets sold by faction lawmakers.

Failure to properly list income or expenditures in political fund reports violates the Political Fund Control Law. The statute of limitations for such violations is five years.

The Abe faction is suspected of building a slush fund worth about 500 million yen over the past five years and distributing the money back to member lawmakers.

The slush fund is believed to have contained money from the sales of tickets to the faction’s fund-raising parties that exceeded sales quotas assigned to each member.

The faction and the lawmakers failed to record any of this money in their political fund reports, the sources said.

The unreported money in the Kishida faction had nothing to do with quotas for fund-raiser ticket sales, the sources said.

Kishida has also denied the existence of a slush fund in the faction.

“I never gave an explanation that was different from my perception at that point,” he said Dec. 12.

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

But unlike the Abe faction, the Nikai faction listed the money as donations in the expenditure section of its reports.

Nikai faction lawmakers also recorded the money they received in the income section of their political fund reports, the sources said.

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