Photo/Illutration Hirokazu Matsuno announces his resignation as chief Cabinet secretary on Dec. 14. (Takeshi Iwashita)

Tokyo prosecutors investigating a political funding scandal have questioned former Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno and other prominent figures in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party on a voluntary basis, sources said.

Tsuyoshi Takagi, former chairman of the LDP’s Diet Affairs Committee, Hiroshige Seko, former secretary-general of the party’s Upper House caucus, and Ryu Shionoya, former education minister, were also interviewed, the sources said Dec. 24.

Prosecutors have also requested a voluntary interview with Koichi Hagiuda, former chairman of the LDP’s Policy Research Council.

Matsuno and others have resigned from their posts in the Cabinet or the LDP executive lineup over allegations that the Abe faction, the largest in the party, systematically pooled sales of tickets to its fund-raising parties into a slush fund and later dispersed the money back to its member lawmakers.

The Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office is investigating the apparent failure of the faction and its lawmakers to properly list the money in their political fund reports.

Prosecutors on Dec. 19 searched the office of the Abe faction.

The investigation is now shifting to whether the secretaries-general and other senior faction lawmakers were aware of the slush fund system and the failure to report the money, the sources said.

If their involvement is confirmed, they could be charged with colluding to prepare false income and expenditure reports.

Matsuno was secretary-general of the Abe faction from September 2019 to October 2021, while Takagi has served in the position since August 2022.

The faction, once led by former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, assigned quotas to each member for ticket sales to its fund-raising parties. Amounts exceeding the quotas were pooled into the slush fund and later returned to the lawmakers, the sources said.

For the five-year period from 2018 to 2022, the slush fund had ballooned to about 500 million yen ($3.5 million), they said.

Most of the 99 Abe faction members are believed to have received unreported payments of tens of thousands of yen to 50 million yen.

Matsuno, Takagi and Seko are suspected of receiving more than 10 million yen each, while Hagiuda and Shionoya apparently have received several million yen each.

Prosecutors have asked Matsuno and other faction leaders if they, as recipients of the money, were aware that it was not reported, according to the sources.

The statute of limitations for unreported political funds is five years under the Political Fund Control Law.

Core members of the Abe faction decided to abolish the slush fund system when they held a party in 2022, but they later retracted the decision, the sources said.

Prosecutors have asked Matsuno and others if the initial decision to abolish the system was due to possible violations of the law, they said.

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