Photo/Illutration Takuo Komori, upper left, and Ryusho Kato, lower right, who both resigned as parliamentary secretaries on Jan. 31, attend a Lower House plenary session the same day. (Takeshi Iwashita)

Two parliamentary secretaries who belonged to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s Abe faction have resigned over their failure to report political funds, but both said they would keep their Lower House seats.

Takuo Komori on Jan. 31 stepped down as a parliamentary secretary in the internal affairs ministry, while Ryusho Kato resigned from the same post in the transport ministry.

Komori failed to include 700,000 yen ($4,800) he received from the Abe faction in his 2022 political fund report, while Kato did not report 100,000 yen.

The two said they would not resign from the Diet on grounds they were unaware they had failed to include the amounts in their reports.

Speaking with reporters the same day, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida accepted responsibility for appointing the two, but he added that three other parliamentary secretaries from the faction once led by former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe would remain in their posts.

Komori was replaced by Lower House member Shoji Nishida, while Kato was replaced by Lower House member Masanao Ozaki.

The Abe faction on the same day said that over the five-year period between 2018 and 2022, a total of 676.54 million yen was distributed to 95 political organizations headed by faction members. This money was not included in the faction’s political fund reports.

The faction submitted revised reports for the years between 2020 and 2022 to the internal affairs ministry.

The money distributed to the faction members is believed to be amounts that exceeded the quotas assigned to the lawmakers for sales of tickets to Abe faction fund-raising parties.

The revised reports showed the Abe faction had additional income of 435.88 million yen over the three-year period, close to double the 297.44 million yen that was actually listed as income over that period.

A total of 427.26 million yen was newly listed as expenditures in the faction political fund report, described as “donations” to 91 faction members.

Lower House member Yoshitaka Ikeda, who was arrested and indicted on charges of violating the Political Fund Control Law, received the largest amount of 32.08 million yen.

Others receiving large sums were Upper House member Yasutada Ono with 31.46 million yen and Yaichi Tanigawa with 23.03 million yen. Ono was also indicted while Tanigawa received a summary indictment and resigned his Lower House seat.

Koichi Hagiuda, the former LDP policy chief, received 19.52 million yen, while Lower House member Hiromi Mitsubayashi got 18.08 million yen.

Ryu Shionoya, the formal head of the faction, received 1.96 million yen.

As for the other four top Abe faction officials, Hirokazu Matsuno, the former chief Cabinet secretary, and Tsuyoshi Takagi, the former LDP Diet Affairs Committee chairman, both received 8.65 million yen, while Hiroshige Seko, the former secretary-general of the LDP’s Upper House caucus got 8.36 million yen and Yasutoshi Nishimura, the former economy minister, received 700,000 yen.

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