Japan Press Weekly

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2009 July 1 - 7 [POLITICS]

DPJ leader Hatoyama accepted over 300 million yen in donation from anonymous individuals

Personal donations up to 50,000 yen, which the management body Yuai Seikei Konwakai is not obliged to report the donors’ names and addresses, accounted for 60 percent of the 5.9 million yen it accepted in donation in ten years.

Some people whose names are cited as “donors” told Akahata that they had never made such donations. It is impossible to know with certainty that donations were actually made by individuals.

Commenting on the report that 22 million yen out of personal donations had been false, with the donors’ list including the names of deceased individuals, Japanese Communist Party Secretariat Head Ichida Tadayoshi on July 1 said, “Neither Mr. Hatoyama nor the DPJ has come clean publicly. All the facts need to be revealed before the people”.

Ichida criticized Hatoyama for making an apologetic statement at the news conference on June 30 and laying the blame on his secretary and the “scarcity of personal donations” to him. Ichida said, “The statement is impossible to comprehend. It only draws stronger suspicions”.

Also referring to suspicious donations involving the Liberal Democratic Party, Ichida said, “The matter should not be viewed from the viewpoint of which party gains from the situation before the general election but from an overall viewpoint of what money and politics is all about”. - Akahata, July 2, 2009