“Tokyo District Prosecutors’ Office considers indicting both factions… “Determined that mandatory investigation is necessary.”
On the 19th, the Tokyo District Prosecutors’ Office Special Department, which is investigating the political funding issue of the faction of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party of Japan, announced on the 19th that the Abe faction (99 members) ‘Seiwa Policy Research Association’ and the Nikai faction (40 members) ‘Shisui Kai (志帥?)’ The Asahi Shimbun reported that the office will be searched and seized.
The newspaper reported this, citing an official. “The special department is investigating both the Abe faction and the Nikai faction with the intention of indicting them. “It appears that it was decided that a mandatory investigation was necessary to explain the actual situation,” the newspaper reported.
According to officials, the Abe faction and the Nikai faction have been holding political fund-raising parties once a year. A quota of ‘party tickets’ was given to lawmakers belonging to factions based on the number of times they were elected and their positions. It was 20,000 yen (about 183,000 won) per sheet. Party tickets are tickets sold at paid events (parties) to raise political funds.
The political funds raised by each member of the National Assembly beyond their quota were returned to the members. Both the Abe faction and the Nikai faction defunded the excess quota without recording it in the political fund balance report.
The size of Abepa’s slush fund is estimated to be a total of 500 million yen (about 4.55 billion won) over the five years from 2018 to 2022. Nikaipa is also expected to reach billions.
In particular, the Abe faction did not record the excess of quota returned to lawmakers as expenditures in the balance of payments report. There are suspicions of systematic defunding. Lawmakers who received slush funds also did not specify in their reports the money they received back as income from political organizations under instructions from factions.
Nikaipa recorded the money returned to the congressman as expenditure, and the congressman also recorded it as ‘donation income’.
The Special Department believes that the Abe faction, which completely defunded the excess of party ticket quotas, is more malicious. The two factions, the Abe faction and the Nikai faction, are being investigated as they are believed to be large in scale and highly intentional, as they were not mentioned in Suu Kyi’s report.
The Special Department has been conducting ‘random hearings (investigations)’ on factional accountants. Asahi reported that it appears that a mandatory investigation into factional offices was also deemed necessary.
The Special Department began investigating the Abe faction member on the 16th.
Japan’s Political Fund Regulation Act stipulates that organizations that have purchased party tickets worth more than 200,000 yen (approximately 1.7 million won) must be listed in the balance of payments report. Failure to enter information will result in imprisonment of up to 5 years or a fine of up to 1 million yen. If a conspiracy is established, people other than the accounting manager can be held guilty.
Source: Donga
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