Japan prosecutors make 1st arrest in funding scandal

TOKYO (Reuters) — A lawmaker from Japan’s ruling party was arrested on Sunday for suspected fundraising violations, media reported, the first arrest in a scandal that has battered support for Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

Tokyo prosecutors arrested Yoshitaka Ikeda, public broadcaster NHK and Kyodo News said, escalating the biggest fundraising scandal to engulf Kishida’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in decades.

Ikeda allegedly received a kickback of some 48 million yen ($330,000), the largest among the LDP faction of the late former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, which is at the center of the scandal, NHK said.

A person answering the phone at the Tokyo prosecutors office said no one was available to comment. The office has previously told Reuters it could not comment on any ongoing investigation.

No one responded to calls to Ikeda’s offices in Tokyo and his base in central Japan. Footage on NHK showed a sign on the door of Ikeda’s offices saying they were temporarily closed.

The scandal last month forced the resignations of Abe faction heavyweights Hirokazu Matsuno as Kishida’s chief cabinet secretary, Yasutoshi Nishimura as trade and industry minister and Koichi Hagiuda as LDP policy chief.

The three have not commented on media reports about their involvement.

Prosecutors suspect the Abe faction failed to report as much as 500 million yen ($3.5 million) in funds over five years, while the smaller Nikai faction was believed to have not reported 100 million yen, NHK has reported.

Media reports have said prosecutors were examining whether other LDP factions, including the one Kishida previously headed, were involved in the scandal. The prime minister has vowed to “consider appropriate measures at the right time to restore public trust.”

His support had sunk to around 20 percent in mid-December in media public opinion surveys, the lowest for any prime minister in more than a decade.

The investigation centers on money raised from ticket sales to party events, some of which was allegedly given directly to lawmakers by the party and left off the books, despite requirements to report such payments under the Political Funds Control Act.