Boasting the largest political force within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party that has produced many prime ministers, the Abe faction has apparently been plagued by hubris and indiscipline.

There is little doubt that this mindset of complacency and entitlement due to its long grip on power was behind the faction’s organizational involvement in fund-raising misconduct.

The Abe faction’s move to “correct” its political funding reports and disband itself should not spell an end to the scandal.

The “Big Five” politicians who formed the core of the faction should also be held accountable for any unethical actions they committed with regard to the scandal over fund-raising parties.

The Abe faction announced that it had failed to report a total of 676.54 million yen ($4.6 million) provided to 95 political fund management organizations related to its members as the faction’s expenditures over the past five years.

For three of the five years, a period subject to the legal requirement for publishing the expenditures, the faction made a correction to its entries to declare 427.26 million yen provided to 91 lawmakers as political donations and submitted revised reports to the internal affairs ministry.

The announcement means that every year, the faction effectively concealed more than 100 million yen of political funds that flowed into its coffers and secretly used the money to set up slush funds.

Moreover, the majority of the faction’s members were involved in these covert operations. This is another astonishing and appalling revelation concerning the scandal.

At this juncture, the Abe faction did not respond to requests for a news conference but settled with issuing a single-page comment.

The statement just disclosed the total amount of unreported expenditures and stated, "Please see the corrected income and expenditure report on the website of the internal affairs ministry for details.”

This is a bad joke.

Who started the clandestine system for returning the part of the income from party ticket sales that exceeded the quota to individual politicians, and when?

The faction claims the unreported funds provided to its members was used for legitimate political activities, but then why did the group turn it into secret funds?

Without being shown receipts or other evidence, the faction’s claim cannot be taken at face value. Many questions remain unanswered, yet how far does the faction intend to go in turning its back on the responsibility to explain?

Ryu Shionoya, the formal head of the faction and former education minister, is, needless to say, heavily responsible for the matter.

A lot of blame should also be placed on the five top faction executives: Hirokazu Matsuno, the former chief Cabinet secretary; Tsuyoshi Takagi, the former LDP Diet Affairs Committee chairman; Hiroshige Seko, the former secretary-general of the LDP’s Upper House caucus; Koichi Hagiuda, the former LDP policy chief; and Yasutoshi Nishimura, the former economy minister.

All received slush funds but claimed they were not aware of the fact.

"I left (fund reporting tasks) entirely to my secretary,” one of them said.

“I received no report (about the money),” another claimed.

Their desperate and single-minded attempts to get themselves off the hook show no readiness to take political and moral responsibility.

Although they were not indicted on the grounds of "no suspicion," the amount of received political funds not reported by Hagiuda, Seko, Matsuno and Takagi exceeded 10 million yen each over five years.

The largest 27.28 million yen of funds Hagiuda received but failed to report is close to the "30 million yen" considered the standard for prosecution by the investigative authorities.

It’s hardly surprising that many Japanese taxpayers feel unconvinced.

As the executives of the organization that has caused the loss of public trust in politics, they should interview all members, compile the findings into a wholesale report and publish it.

It's also necessary to clarify the facts about why and how, despite former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, then the chairman, making a call for abolishing the return of excess amounts to faction members in April 2022, the dubious practice ultimately continued intact.

It is important to make the five politicians fully explain the related facts and take disciplinary actions against them that satisfy the public.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who continued to appoint them to Cabinet and key party positions, is facing a serious test of his political integrity.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Feb. 2