The LDP Cracks Down on Political Fund Scandal
The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has taken disciplinary action against 39 lawmakers, including senior members of the Abe faction, in response to a political fund scandal that has shaken the party and the Kishida administration.
The punishments were decided at a meeting of the Party Ethics Committee on April 4th. The most severe penalty, expulsion from the party, was recommended for Ryu Shionoya, head of the Abe faction's executive board, and Hiroshige Seko, former secretary-general of the LDP's Upper House caucus.
Other prominent members of the Abe faction, including Hakubun Shimomura and Yasutoshi Nishimura, received one-year suspensions of their LDP membership. Tsuyoshi Takagi, the current faction secretary-general, was suspended for six months.
The punishments stem from the failure of 36 lawmakers from the Abe and Nikai factions to report 5 million yen ($33,000) or more in revenues from their faction's fund-raising parties on their political fund reports over the five years through 2022.
Shionoya, Shimomura, and Nishimura were penalized for jeopardizing public trust in politics, although their underreported amount was less than 5 million yen.
The LDP said 82 incumbent lawmakers and the managers of three LDP branches failed to report the refunds over the five years.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who is LDP president, and other party executives said Shionoya, Seko, Shimomura, and Nishimura warrant severe punishments because they could have stopped the Abe faction's practice of distributing proceeds from the ticket sales.
In April 2022, former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who headed the eponymous faction, told the four lawmakers to end the practice. However, the faction decided to continue after the four held talks at a meeting in August that year, a month after Abe was shot to death.
In his statement, Shionoya said Kishida's moral and political responsibility should be called into question. Kishida was not punished even though a former accounting official of the faction that he headed until early December received a summary indictment for failing to report fund-raising party revenues in January.
Faction leader Toshihiro Nikai, a former party secretary-general, also escaped punishment after he said he will not seek re-election in the next Lower House election. His aide was charged over the failure of Nikai's fund management organization to report 35.26 million yen over the five years, the largest amount among the 82 incumbent lawmakers who kept fund-raising party revenues off the books.