February 28, 2025

The House of Representatives Budget Committee on February 27 held a closed-door hearing at a Tokyo hotel from Matsumoto Jun’ichiro, the former treasurer of the now-defunct Abe faction, as an unsworn witness over the slush-fund scandal, revealing discrepancies between Matsumoto’s testimony and that of former Abe faction executives.

After the witness hearing, Japanese Communist Party representative Tamura Takaaki, who was present at the hearing, stressed the need for the Diet to summon the ex-executives.

Tamura at a press conference said, “Matsumoto testified that the creation of slush funds had been underway for quite a long time, so the statements given by the faction officials to the Political Ethics Hearing Committee about kickback money are suspected to have been false.”

Matsumoto during the hearing testified that all executives in their meeting in August 2022 agreed to resume the practice of refunding the money which exceeded the quotas on fundraiser ticket sales as off-the-book revenues.

They, however, stated last year at the Political Ethics Hearing Committee that they did not know about kickbacks. Asked about this fact, Matsumoto responded, “That’s strange.”

Matsumoto testified that he had been told by the former faction’s secretary general that “that was the way.” Regarding when the kickback scheme began, he stated that it was “possible” that the creation of the undisclosed fund had been taking place for more than 20 years.

The said faction executives are thought to be Shionoya Ryu, Nishimura Yasutoshi, and Shimomura Hakubunm (Lower House lawmakers at that time), and Seko Hiroshige (Upper House lawmaker at that time).

Past related article:
> JCP protests against Lower House Budget Committee chair’s decision to hold closed-door hearing with ex-Abe faction accountant [February 19, 2025]