Secret Remains after Testimonies

The Political Ethics Councils of both Houses of the Diet had hearings from the lawmakers of the Liberal Democratic Party, who had been involved in the slush fund scandal which shook the party and caused bitter defeat in the general election of the Lower House in October. The lawmakers who testified in the council mostly attributed their receipt of kickback fund to their factions or their secretaries. The greatest question that who, when and how had that system been created and maintained is still left unsolved.

The lawmakers who involved in the scandal were affiliated to former Abe faction and former Nikai faction, which top leaders were already dead or retired as lawmaker. In the councils held in March, some leaders of those factions witnessed about their receipt about the kickback money from their factions, but they did not tell how that system had been introduced and maintained in those factions.

 

The LDP excluded some lawmakers who did not testify in March from the list of official endorsement in the general election in October, recognizing them as reluctant to explain their involvement in the scandal. The involved lawmakers stepped forward to take the questions in the councils possibly to secure their official candidacy in future elections. Fifteen members of the Lower House and four of the Upper House appeared in open testimony of the councils.

 

Former Chairman of LDP Policy Research Council, Koichi Hagiuda, told in the council of the Lower House that Secretary General of Abe faction told him that the surpass of sales of fundraising party ticket beyond the quota would be returned in 2003, and that he was instructed not to report that kickback to the government in 2004. It was proved that the secret kickback system, which was illegal, existed as early as twenty years ago.

 

However, former Education Minister, Masahiko Shibayama, revealed in the council that it was 2014 when he was asked from the faction not to report that kickbacks. Although Shibayama had been reporting the fund as donation from the faction until 2013, he stopped it, following the instruction of the faction. There is a gap of ten years between Hagiuda and Shibayama about when the secret kickback started.

 

Former Minister of Defense, Tomomi Inada, testified that she did not know the illegality of the secret kickbacks and former prime minister Shinzo Abe, then leader of the faction, told her in May 2022 that the kickback system would be abolished. However, the system remained after Abe was assassinated in July 2022. No one has explained how exactly the faction leaders talked about the secret kickback system and decided to continue it.

 

One of the major questions in the scandal is how that system was created. The leader of the faction when Hagiuda was instructed not to report the kickback was Yoshiro Mori, former prime minister. But Mori refused to tell the story about it when former Prime Minister Fumio Kishida interviewed him. There is an argument that the interview to the involved lawmaker should be made in the Committee for Budget, which has legal penalty on perjury.

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