Photo/Illutration The Liberal Democratic Party headquarters (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party is considering asking some Abe faction leaders to leave the party over a political fund scandal, a harsher disciplinary measure than previously expected, sources said.

The LDP plans to take disciplinary measures against about 40 lawmakers who failed to list 5 million yen ($33,000) or more in revenues from fund-raising parties on their political fund reports, the sources said.

The Party Ethics Committee is expected to hold a meeting on April 4 to decide on the specific measures.

Among the LDP’s eight disciplinary measures, a recommendation to leave the party is the second harshest, after expulsion.

The party was initially expected to punish four current and former Abe faction leaders with suspension of party membership, the third-harshest measure, or non-endorsement in elections, the fourth severest.

However, the LDP is leaning toward a heavier penalty in light of public criticism over the scandal, the sources said.

“The people will not be satisfied unless we serve strict punishments,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has told party executives.

For years, the Abe and Nikai factions returned party ticket sales that exceeded individual lawmakers’ quotas to those lawmakers.

A total of 82 lawmakers from the two factions were found to have kept those funds off the books over the five years through 2022.

The lawmakers whose underreported amount was less than 5 million yen will be given a warning from Toshimitsu Motegi, the party’s secretary-general, or a similar light caution, the sources said.

In April 2022, former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe decided to abolish the faction’s practice of returning party ticket sales to member lawmakers. But after Abe was fatally shot in July that year, the practice continued following a meeting a month later.

Ryu Shionoya, who heads the Abe faction’s 15-member executive board, former education minister Hakubun Shimomura, former economy minister Yasutoshi Nishimura and Hiroshige Seko, former secretary-general of the LDP’s Upper House caucus, attended the meeting.

The four lawmakers were initially expected to be slapped with suspension of party membership or non-endorsement in elections due to their involvement in the meeting.

The sources said Shionoya and Seko, who are top Abe faction lawmakers in the lower and upper chambers of the Diet, respectively, could face a harsher disciplinary measure than Shimomura and Nishimura.

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