dChan
Anonymous ID: 623ec5 Jan. 18, 2020, 9:58 p.m. No.7852618   🗄️.is 🔗kun

Japan lawmaker aide admits illegality in election campaign scandal

 

HIROSHIMA (Kyodo) – A secretary of Japanese lawmaker Anri Kawai, wife of a former justice minister, has admitted knowing that payments made to campaign staff during last year's upper house election were illegal, sources close to the matter said Sunday.

 

The election campaign office of Kawai, who won a seat for the Liberal Democratic Party in July's House of Councillors election, is suspected of covering up payments to staff that were double the amount permitted under Japan's election law. The state-paid political aide has told Hiroshima prosecutors during voluntary questioning that he was involved in providing daily allowance payments totaling 30,000 yen ($272) to a group of "election warblers," as women who are driven around in small vans touting their candidates over loudspeakers are known, according to the sources.

 

On Wednesday, the prosecutors searched the offices of the lawmaker and her husband, Katsuyuki Kawai, a lower house member of the ruling party, as well as the home of the secretary, who was in charge of coordinating plans for the staff members during the election campaign. The campaign office is suspected of making two receipts to be signed by the workers to make it appear the payments were under the legal cap of 15,000 yen per day.

 

Hiring skilled campaign staff for the election was seen as important as the LDP headed by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sought to win both closely-contested seats in the constituency of Hiroshima for the first time in 21 years. The prosecutors are investigating whether the lawmaker and the former justice minister, who was active in recruiting the campaign staff, were involved in deciding the payment amounts.

 

The secretary used to be an aide to Katsuyuki Kawai, who resigned as justice minister in October after a weekly magazine first reported the allegation. After the election, he became an official secretary of his wife, who is in her first term as a lawmaker. Some of the campaign staffers have already admitted to receiving a 30,000 yen allowance under voluntarily interrogations by the prosecutors, investigative sources said earlier.

 

The Kawais have denied any intention to resign as lawmakers or as LDP members.

https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20200119/p2g/00m/0na/018000c