Prosecutors may start searching locations related to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's largest political group in the coming days, following its embroilment in a fundraising scandal, a source familiar with the matter said Sunday.
Questioning of the faction's lawmakers has already begun on a voluntary basis, as the prosecutors are looking into allegations that it failed to declare hundreds of millions of yen of fundraising party revenue in political funding reports, with the money going to faction members.
The scandal has hit Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's government, resulting in the replacement of all four ministers belonging to the faction once led by the late former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. His Cabinet's support rate has plummeted to a fresh low of 22.3 percent in the latest survey by Kyodo News.
The Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office's special investigation squad is believed to have obtained a list of lawmakers who received undocumented money and other documents to uncover the shady funds, believed to have amounted to about 500 million yen ($3.5 million) over a five-year period through 2022 for the Abe faction.
The scandal emerged following a criminal complaint alleging five LDP factions underreported revenue from political fundraising parties. They include the Kishida faction, which is the fourth largest within the LDP.
LDP factions have traditionally set quotas for lawmakers on the sale of party tickets, usually priced at 20,000 yen. In some groups, if targets are surpassed, the extra funds have been passed back to them as a type of commission.
In the Abe faction, those funds have not been logged as either expenditure or revenue in reports coming from the faction or lawmakers' side, in a potential violation of the political funds control law.
The Political Funds Control Act requires an accountant to submit a report on income and expenditure, and failure to report can result in imprisonment for up to five years or a fine of up to 1 million yen. Lawmakers could also be accused of committing a crime, such as in cases where they are thought to have colluded with the accountant in charge.
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