Four Japanese ministers resigned on Thursday, a day after Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced his willingness to confront a massive financial fraud scandal within his party, making the political situation in the executive branch even more delicate, Liberation reported, which quoted by Rador Radio Romania.

“You need a person in the right position”: Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has repeatedly justified the choice of his assistants in the September reshuffle of the government. Three months later, four ministers and eight other officials, including five deputy ministers and the head of the political bureau of the Liberal Democratic Party (PLD), led by Fumio Kishida, were de facto dismissed. The list is probably not finished. The reason: all of them are suspected of not declaring the sums received in cash and secretly from the funds of the Abe faction, to which they belong in the LDP.

Thus, there are two pillars that saved the situation at the end of the summer: Hirokazu Matsuno, the secretary-general and government spokesman, the de facto second-in-command in the executive power, and Yasutoshi Nishimura, the powerful and ambitious minister of industry, trade, energy and economic activity.

In their place come two former “tenors” (Yoshimasa Hayashi and Ken Saito), who were deposed three months ago, but who have a new virtue – now they do not belong to the tricard of the “Abe faction”, which has retained its name despite the death of the eponymous leader Shinzo Abe, assassinated in July 2022.

In fact, the entire PLD is in turmoil, and Kishida knows it very well. Hence his difficulty in explaining a clear strategy during a press conference on Wednesday night, when he was forced to limit himself to repeating that he would act as a “flash of fire” and that “answers will have to be given when the facts are established “. be established.”

The “facts,” he said, will not necessarily be the version the elected officials want to present “after they do their own investigation and correct the errors.” Rather, the results of forensic investigations conducted by a group of fifty investigators from around the country to assist the financial division of the Tokyo prosecutor’s office.

Very permissive legislation

It all started with an article in the Communist newspaper Shinbun Akahata more than a year ago. One of the journalists noticed the difference in the financial reports published by the LLD factions and the financial structures of each elected official. Kobe University law professor Hiroshi Kamiwaki investigated the suspicious claims and filed several complaints with the Tokyo prosecutor’s office.

He has since verified and released elements of the investigation to the media. It is reported that dozens of MPs from the faction have benefited from secret kickbacks for years, using very discreet legislation.

Political entities are effectively authorized to sell at high and inflated prices to companies, individuals and other potential buyers seats for receptions in the presence of elected officials, receptions that are the occasion for hidden donations.

“At this level, when discrepancies in amounts are repeated every year for many elected officials, it cannot be an accounting error, as the relevant MPs are trying to make people believe. It is part of a hidden system of obtaining money, which is decided by the hierarchy,” Professor Kamiwaki explains to Libération.

“The investigation should not be limited to charging accountants, elected officials are responsible,” he insists, though he believes the embezzlement seen in the accounts is probably only the tip of the iceberg.

“This is the biggest political and financial scandal since the late 1980s,” Kamiwaki believes. “The law that is supposed to regulate this practice is a sieve with a big hole in the middle,” adds attorney and former prosecutor Nobuo Gohara. But he fears that criminalizing the facts will be difficult because the legislation developed by elected officials gives them many loopholes. “There is no monitoring body,” Kamiwaki’s lawyer complains.

Although Abe’s faction, which is very angry with the prime minister, is now at the center of the scandal, there is a risk that the turn of others will come. The days of the Kishida government appear to be numbered. The prime minister sought re-election as PLD president in the fall of 2024 to remain in the prime ministership for another three years.

According to the latest poll published on Thursday, December 14, by news agency Jiji, the executive’s approval rating has fallen to 17%, the lowest since the party returned to power in December 2012.