LDP's Shimomura denies he ordered kickbacks to resume in 2022
Hakubun Shimomura, former policy chief of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, said Tuesday that he did not request kickback practices at an LDP faction be resumed after they were once suspended in April 2022.
Speaking as a witness at a meeting of the Budget Committee of the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of parliament, Shimomura said the resumption was not decided at an executive meeting in August 2022.
In a hearing in February, a former chief accountant of the now-defunct faction once led by former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that "a faction executive" asked for the restart of the kickback system in July 2022, and the resumption was decided at an executive meeting in August of the same year.
The testimonies of the former chief accountant and Shimomura, whom the leading opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan and others regard as "the faction executive" in question, conflicted with each other.
According to Shimomura's explanation, a faction member called for kickbacks exceeding their quotas in their fundraising ticket sales after a fundraising party was held in May 2022.
Shimomura said he had told Abe, then head of the faction, and the former chief accountant after June of that year that "such a call has come out." Shimomura also said that there was such a call in his talks over the phone with the former chief accountant in late July of the same year, after Abe's death.
Shimomura said he "merely told them in a businesslike way" such opinions, emphasizing that "I didn't mean I requested the resumption."
He told the day's committee meeting that the executive meeting held in August 2022 "discussed means to conduct kickbacks in forms other than cash refunds but did not reach a conclusion."
His explanation matches testimony given by Hiroshige Seko, a Lower House lawmaker, who has left the LDP, that the executive meeting was about alternatives for the faction to buy up tickets at fundraising parties by its member lawmakers.
Shimomura explained that the discrepancies between testimonies from him and the former chief accountant came from differences in perception.
"A conclusion should have been made clear at the executive meeting," he said. "I need to reflect on how I phrase things if I made the former chief accountant misunderstand."
Some opposition lawmakers said the facts have not been made clear yet and called for summoning former LDP General Council chief Ryu Shionoya and former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, a former leader of the faction, as witnesses.
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