Japan Panel Backs Decision Not to Indict 8 Ex-Abe Faction Members

Tokyo, April 21 (Jiji Press)–A Japanese panel has upheld prosecutors’ decision not to indict eight former senior members of the Liberal Democratic Party’s now-defunct faction led by former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe over a high-profile political funds scandal. The Abe faction, which was the ruling party’s biggest intraparty group, is suspected of creating slush funds by not reporting in political funds reports the payments back to member lawmakers of fundraising party revenues that exceeded their sales quotas, in violation of the political funds control law. The Tokyo No. 5 Committee for the Inquest of Prosecution said in a ruling issued on March 13 that the decision by the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office not to charge the eight former members, including LDP Executive Acting Secretary-General Koichi Hagiuda, and a former administrative staff member was reasonable. The other seven former members of the faction, called Seiwa Seisaku Kenkyukai, are former Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno, LDP Election Strategy Committee chief Yasutoshi Nishimura, former LDP parliamentary affairs leader Tsuyoshi Takagi, Hiroshige Seko, former LDP secretary-general in the House of Councillors, former LDP General Council leader Ryu Shionoya, former LDP Policy Research Council head Hakubun Shimomura and former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori. A professor who had filed a criminal complaint against the eight for the failure to report the kickbacks between 2020 and 2022 filed for a review of the prosecutors’ decision not to indict them. The prosecution inquest committee, made up of citizens, judged that there was insufficient evidence to reverse the prosecutors’ decision. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]