A former vice speaker of the Fukuoka Prefectural Assembly has testified under his own name that he paid ¥5 million in cash for the post, the fifth person to do so as a scandal over money changing hands for assembly posts widens, FNN Prime Online reported.
Shigehiro Hatanaka, who served four terms in the assembly with a Democratic-leaning caucus until 2023, was vice speaker for one year from 2018. He said the payment was an open secret in the chamber.
“It was a taboo, and it became something approved without being said. As the mood of the caucus, when you took the vice speaker's post, ¥5 million was in each member's mind.”Shigehiro Hatanaka, former Fukuoka prefectural assembly member
A note in his wife's ledger
Hatanaka said he handed over the ¥5 million on November 26 of the year he became vice speaker. His wife recorded the outlay in a notebook, he said, and he described carrying the money in a paper bag from a manju shop, with the lid put back on.
He said Toshio Yoshimura, then the leader of his caucus and a former assembly member, ordered the payment.
“It wasn't that he said, 'Bring me ¥5 million, get it ready.' But I am certain it was an instruction from former assembly member Yoshimura.”Hatanaka
Hatanaka said he does not know where the money went. Asked about its destination, he said: "That is somewhere we don't know. I don't know at all. There's no way to know."
Savings and a party
Expecting that ¥5 million would be needed for the vice speaker's post, Hatanaka said he had saved the money. He also disclosed that a political fundraising party celebrating his appointment brought in about ¥4 million.
He said he had decided to speak now because a third-party committee had finished its hearings and the assembly had set up a hundred-article committee, a body that can summon witnesses and demand records.
“By putting my name out and speaking, I take responsibility.”Hatanaka, on why he testified under his own name
A widening circle of testimony
The money-for-posts scandal centers on the speaker's and vice speaker's positions. Gensho Yoshimatsu, an assembly member, was the first to allege cash changed hands.
Two Liberal Democratic Party members, Hideyuki Eto and Akira Higuchi, have also testified that they paid large sums. In October, Masahiko Niimura, a former assembly member who once served as vice speaker, said Yoshimura had ordered him to hand ¥5 million to Mr. Kurauchi.
Former speaker Kurauchi, described as the chamber's strongman, has again denied that money changed hands, saying, "I am not telling lies." He brushed off the stream of new testimony with a smile, FNN Prime Online reported.