Photo/Illutration The Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office’s special investigation division seizes items from the office of Upper House member Akira Ishii in Toride, Ibaraki Prefecture, on Aug. 27. (Mikio Kano)

A former aide to ousted lawmaker Akira Ishii never did any work for the politician nor collected the salary paid for by the government, sources told The Asahi Shimbun.

Nearly the entire pay for the former aide was transferred to Ishii’s staff members, according to the sources.

The former state-paid aide made the comments in voluntary questioning by the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office.

Prosecutors suspect Ishii fraudulently obtained about 8 million yen ($54,200) in aide salaries paid by the central government over about 18 months from 2021 to 2022.

On Aug. 27, investigators searched Ishii’s offices, including the one in the Upper House members’ office building in Tokyo’s Nagatacho district.

Prosecutors are also investigating whether Ishii was involved in other cases of fraudulently collecting the salaries of state-paid aides, the sources said.

Ishii, 68, submitted his resignation as an Upper House member to the speaker of the house on Sept. 1. It was approved.

Nippon Ishin (Japan Innovation Party) expelled Ishii on Aug. 29.

According to the sources, one of the aides whom Ishii registered with the Upper House in 2021 was a relative affiliated with a social welfare corporation where Ishii serves as chair.

This relative had left a job and was then hired by the social welfare corporation. While working there, Ishii asked to “borrow” the relative’s name as an aide, the sources said.

Although listed as an aide, Ishii’s relative worked most of the week at the social welfare corporation in southern Ibaraki Prefecture, handling welfare-related tasks, and performed no actual aide work, the sources said.

In response to a series of similar fraud scandals in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Diet in 2004 amended the law governing salaries for lawmakers’ aides.

The revised law requires such salaries to be transferred directly into the aide’s bank account.

However, according to sources, the bank account of Ishii’s former aide was managed by Ishii’s office at the time.

When the government salary payments were deposited, staff at the office simply withdrew cash from the aide’s account and used it mainly for office expenses and other costs, the sources said.

It is believed that nearly all of the former aide’s salary was taken by staff at the office.

Prosecutors suspect that Ishii himself was involved based on the former aide’s statements, the salary management practices, and how the money was used, the sources said.

Several other individuals have also told prosecutors that they lent their names as aides for Ishii, sources said. Some of these individuals reportedly participated in Ishii’s political activities.

Prosecutors are investigating whether these individuals actually performed aide duties.

After serving in the Toride city assembly in Ibaraki Prefecture, Ishii was first elected to the Lower House in the 2009 election as a proportional representation candidate of the now-defunct Democratic Party of Japan.

In the 2016 Upper House election, he won a proportional representation seat with a party called Osaka Ishin no Kai. In the 2022 Upper House election, he ran as a Nippon Ishin candidate and won.

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