Tokyo: Data storage media that prosecutors seized when searching offices of arrested Japanese lawmaker Yoshitaka Ikeda were found to have been damaged, sources said Monday.

The special investigation squad of the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office believes that Ikeda or his staff  damaged the media in an attempt to destroy evidence.

Ikeda, 57, a member of the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of the Diet, Japan’s parliament, was arrested Sunday on suspicion of violating the political funds control law.

He was a member of the Liberal Democratic Party faction once led by the late former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, which is at the center of the ruling party’s slush fund scandal.

According to the sources, the Abe faction imposed quotas for fundraising party ticket sales on its members depending on the number of times they have been elected and the positions they held.

Excess revenues are believed to have been kicked back to the lawmakers. The money was allegedly not recorded in political funds reports submitted by the faction or member lawmakers’ organizations.

Ikeda allegedly conspired with secretary Kazuhiro Kakinuma, 45, who served as treasurer, to understate revenues by failing to record a total of 48 million yen in money kicked back from the faction in his fund management organization’s political funds reports for 2018 to 2022.

On Dec. 27 last year, the special squad searched Ikeda’s office in an office building for lawmakers in Tokyo and local office in Nagoya.

The squad examined data storage media seized on the day and found that stored data were damaged, sources said.

The team concluded that it is highly likely that Ikeda’s side intentionally broke the media to destroy evidence. This led the team to arrest Ikeda and Kakinuma.

It is unusual for a lawmaker to be arrested on suspicion of violating the political funds control law. Ikeda’s arrest is believed to be the first since former Lower House member Takanori Sakai was held on suspicion of violating the law in 2003.

JIJI Press