Tokyo, 05 February , /AJMEDIA/
Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party has begun an investigation into its members related to the latest political funds scandal that has rocked the LDP since late last year, lawmakers said.
A probe team led by LDP General Council chief Hiroshi Moriyama plans to question about 90 lawmakers from three factions, including the largest one that the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe used to head, with the aim of compiling a report this week.
Opposition parties, however, have criticized the LDP, headed by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, arguing such an internal investigation is unlikely to be impartial or help clarify how political funds were collected and used among the ruling party’s lawmakers.
The LDP has come under intense scrutiny amid allegations that the three factions, including the one that Kishida led until December, failed to report parts of their revenues from fundraising parties and accumulated slush funds to distribute to its members.
Prosecutors have indicted or issued summary indictments to 10 individuals belonging to the three groups, but executives of the factions have not faced criminal charges due to a lack of evidence.
Earlier this week, the Abe faction said in a statement that it provided around 677 million yen in total to its members from the unreported income over five years through 2022, apologizing for “causing public mistrust in politics.”
Lawmakers who are subject to the intraparty investigation are asked to explain how much they obtained in political funds from their factions and how they used them. All of the three groups have decided to disband, with criticism of the LDP’s factions mounting.
Kenta Izumi, chief of the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, has cast doubt on the probe, saying at a press conference that in order to make the investigation “more transparent,” LDP lawmakers should not be the ones questioning their colleagues.
Last month, the LDP laid out internal reform proposals to strengthen its governance, which pledged to move away from factions as vehicles for securing funds and allocating important government and party posts for lawmakers.
But the reform proposals allowed factions to continue as “policy groups,” while they did not mention whether to introduce guilt by association between lawmakers and accountants under the political funds control law.
At a parliamentary session on Friday, Kishida said the LDP will gather opinions from its lawmakers about revisions to the law for discussions with the opposition bloc during the current ordinary session through June.
