LDP Hagiuda's Office Got Instruction on Kickbacks in 2004

   Tokyo, Dec. 18 (Jiji Press)--Koichi Hagiuda, former policy leader of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party, said Wednesday that his office was instructed in 2004 by his party faction to keep unreported funds at the heart of a high-profile slush funds scandal.
   Hagiuda told a parliamentary ethics panel hearing that the then top secretary of the now-defunct faction, led in recent years by the late former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, told Hagiuda's office not to record in his political funds reports revenues from fundraising party ticket sales that exceeded the sales quota assigned to him.
   This means that Hagiuda's office was aware of the faction's kickback system in 2004, the year after he was first elected to the Diet, the country's parliament. But he added that he learned of the system when he received explanations from his staff after the scandal broke.
   "I again sincerely apologize for causing citizens to have great doubts and evoking distrust in politics," Hagiuda told the panel in the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of the Diet.
   His testimony differed from that of another former Abe faction member Masahiko Shibayama, former education minister. Shibayama, first elected to the Lower House in 2004, told the panel that the faction had given a similar instruction to his side around 2014.

(2024/12/18-22:48)

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