Two parliamentary vice ministers from the largest faction within Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party resigned Wednesday over a political fundraising scandal that has been rattling the country's politics since late last year.
The two lawmakers' faction, formerly led by the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, has been at the center of the scandal. Abe, Japan's longest-serving prime minister, was assassinated during an election campaign in July 2022.
The Abe faction said in a statement that it provided around 677 million yen ($4.57 million) in total to its members from unreported income over five years through 2022, while apologizing for "causing public mistrust in politics."
On Wednesday, the faction submitted a revised political funds report for three years through 2022 to the internal affairs ministry.
Takuo Komori, parliamentary vice minister for internal affairs, said he failed to declare 700,000 yen in his political funds report, and Ryusho Kato, parliamentary vice land minister, admitted to omitting 100,000 yen in his document.
At a Diet session, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who heads the LDP, emphasized that the party must "start from scratch as if it was dismantling itself" in order to restore public trust eroded by the funds scandal.
The LDP has come under intense scrutiny amid allegations that some of its factions, such as the one once led by Abe, failed to report revenue from fundraising parties and accumulated hundreds of millions of yen in slush funds to distribute to its members.
In December, Kishida replaced several ministers and key party members belonging to the Abe faction to mitigate the impact of the scandal on his administration.
But most parliamentary vice ministers from the Abe faction, including Komori and Kato, were retained, as they were believed to be free of suspicion over the funds scandal, sources close to the matter said.
At a parliamentary session, Kenta Izumi, chief of the leading opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, lambasted Kishida for not investigating the vice ministers' involvement in the scandal, saying the premier's responsibility is "grave."
Asked about whether the LDP plans to reprimand lawmakers over the issue, Kishida said the party will "take appropriate steps and consider how to respond" after confirming how political funds were collected and used among its members.
With criticism of LDP factions mounting, Kishida has decided to disband the fourth-biggest group that he headed until December. Some other groups, such as the Abe faction, have followed suit.
Prosecutors have indicted or issued summary indictments to 10 individuals belonging to three factions within the LDP, but executives of the Abe faction did not face criminal charges due to a lack of evidence.
Later Wednesday, Tokyo prosecutors received a petition by a citizen's group for a review of their investigations into five senior members of the Abe faction, including former Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno and former trade minister Yasutoshi Nishimura.
Matsuno and Nishimura had served as the Abe faction's secretary general in charge of practical affairs for the group.
In internal reform proposals approved last week, the LDP pledged to move away from factions as vehicles for securing funds and allocating important government and party posts for lawmakers, but it allowed them to continue as "policy groups."
Opposition lawmakers have expressed doubt about the effectiveness of the proposals, claiming that it is difficult to distinguish between factions and policy groups and that they lack substantive solutions to prevent the abuse of political funds.
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