TOKYO: Tokyo District Court on Monday sentenced the chief accountant of a Liberal Democratic Party faction once led by former Prime Minister ABE Shinzo to three years in prison, suspended for five years, over a high-profile political funds scandal involving LDP factions.
The court, presided over by Judge Yasunobu Hosoya, handed down the suspended sentence after the prosecution sought a three-year term for Junichiro Matsumoto, 77.
According to the indictment, Matsumoto failed to include about 675 million yen in revenues and about 676 million yen in expenditures in the faction’s political funds reports for 2018 to 2022, in violation of the political funds control law.
In the scandal, the Abe faction is believed to have failed to report some revenues from ticket sales at fundraising events and kicked back such unreported revenues to faction members.
A former chief accountant of another faction involved in the scandal has already been sentenced to two years in prison, suspended for five years.
House of Representatives lawmaker Yoshitaka Ikeda and House of Councillors lawmaker Yasutada Ono, both of whom belonged to the Abe faction, as well as their secretaries, have also been indicted in the scandal. Their trial dates have not yet been set.
JIJI Press