Tokyo, 7 October, /AJMEDIA/
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said Monday his former faction failed to report income from fundraising parties in a “clerical error,” as he prepares to fight an election later in the month amid eroding voter trust over a ruling party political funds scandal.
Under accusations made Thursday, the Liberal Democratic Party’s former Ishiba group, known as Suigetsukai and previously headed by Ishiba, is suspected to have violated the political funds control law by failing to report some 800,000 yen in income from fundraising parties held from 2019 to 2021.
Speaking to reporters, Ishiba said it was “undesirable for a clerical error to have taken place, and I take it very seriously.” He added that administrative mistakes had been made by the faction’s office, and that corrections would be issued.
The LDP has been rocked by revelations in late 2023 that some factions created slush funds by underreporting their income from fundraising events. It led to some factions disbanding and to Prime Minister Fumio Kishida standing down to allow his successor to renew the party amid falling public trust.
Ishiba became prime minister Tuesday and is set to fight an election on Oct. 27. On Sunday, he said the LDP will not endorse some lawmakers implicated in the scandal as official candidates.
The accusation was filed Thursday with Tokyo prosecutors by Hiroshi Kamiwaki, a constitutional professor at Kobe Gakuin University who has previously submitted criminal complaints over the slush funds scandal to prosecutors.
The Ishiba group was founded in 2015 and disbanded in September.