Agriculture Minister Shin Mube is suspected of building a slush fund of about ¥4.5 million through payments to the announcers and drivers who worked his Lower House election campaigns, Weekly Bunshun reported, in what would be a violation of the Political Funds Control Act.
The allegation is the fourth against Mube. He has already corrected a political funds report and apologized over illegal donations in the 2024 Lower House election that Bunshun reported. He has also said he will correct an election campaign expenses report over ¥860,000 paid to a freelance photographer in the same year's election, a case treated as vote-buying. Separately, a report on about ¥850,000 in subsidies to a related political group went unrecorded.
The same names, the same dates, the same sums
The payments at issue were made in the December 2014 and October 2017 Lower House elections. Election campaign expense reports filed with the Hokkaido election commission show Mube paid a total of ¥2,856,000 to 17 people in 2014 and ¥1,687,000 to 14 people in 2017 for the work of car-top campaigners — staff who ride on campaign vehicles and call out to voters — including announcers and drivers. The two years together come to more than ¥4.5 million.
The political funds reports of Mube's support group, the Mube Shin Supporters' Federation, record payments of the same amounts, on the same dates, to the same people. In 2014 every name matches. In 2017, 13 of the 14 match; the remaining person's name and date are not recorded, but the amount is the same.
In legal terms, two separate entities have each paid the same sum. Most of the car-top campaigners' pay in 2014 and 2017 was ¥168,000, meaning that with the support group's funds added, each received ¥336,000.
Mube, 56, was picked by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi as a ready-to-work appointee, and questions over his political funds and election law compliance have mounted since.