Tokyo: Japanese public prosecutors have questioned Koichi Hagiuda, former policy chief of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, on a voluntary basis over a political funds scandal involving the party’s largest faction, people familiar with the matter said Tuesday.

Hagiuda became the fifth senior member of the faction, once led by the late former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, to face voluntary questioning by investigators from the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office over the scandal.

The other four are former Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno, Tsuyoshi Takagi, former LDP parliamentary affairs chief, Hiroshige Seko, former secretary-general of the LDP in the House of Councillors, the upper chamber of parliament, and former education minister Ryu Shionoya.

Prosecutors are looking into whether those senior faction members were involved in the scandal in which the group allegedly provided member lawmakers with kickbacks from fundraising party revenues as slush funds systematically.

They are apparently considering questioning former industry minister Yasutoshi Nishimura, another senior faction member, on a voluntary basis over the scandal.

The faction set sales quotas for fundraising party tickets for member lawmakers, and revenues in excess of the quotas were kicked back to the members who sold the tickets, people familiar with the group said. The kickbacks were allegedly not reported by the faction or the receiving members, according to the people.

Most lawmakers in the Abe faction may have received such slush funds, with the total estimated at as much as some 500 million yen over the five years through 2022.

Matsuno, Takagi and Seko allegedly received over 10 million yen in such funds each, Shionoya and Hagiuda several million yen each and Nishimura about 1 million yen.

JIJI Press