Satsuki Katayama, the only female minister in Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Cabinet, denied Thursday a report in a weekly magazine that she accepted money from the owner of a manufacturing company in return for help lobbying tax authorities.

The regional revitalization minister told reporters the Shukan Bunshun article contains factual errors and she is preparing to file a libel suit.

The magazine said the owner paid 1 million yen ($8,900) to Hiroji Namura, one of her secretaries, in July 2015 requesting that tax authorities be lobbied for special treatment on the company's behalf.

But Katayama's office told the Shukan Bunshun that Namura had quit in May that year and the lawmaker introduced him to the owner as a tax accountant friend.

Katayama, a 59-year-old former elite Finance Ministry bureaucrat, obtained her first ministerial post in the Cabinet reshuffle last month. She doubles as minister in charge of women's empowerment.

The magazine, renowned for its reporting on political scandals, quoted the owner of the company as saying that Katayama called a regional taxation bureau chief during a September 2015 meeting, but her call went unanswered. The owner said Katayama claimed the bureau chief was her junior when she worked at the Finance Ministry.

Although Katayama's request to give the company owner special treatment did not bear fruit, Namura told the owner that the money had passed into the lawmaker's hands, according to the report. Her office denies she received the money.

Katayama first entered politics as a House of Representatives member in 2005, but lost her seat in the 2009 lower house election. She turned to the House of Councillors in 2010 and was re-elected in 2016.

Earlier in the day, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a press conference he believes Katayama will "fulfill her responsibilities as a politician and give a thorough explanation about her political activity."

Natsuo Yamaguchi, who heads the Komeito party, the junior coalition partner of Abe's Liberal Democratic Party, echoed the view, telling reporters that Katayama should be held accountable to the public.