A political group led by Agriculture Minister Shin Mube, 56, filed reports that omitted donations of more than ¥30m, Weekly Bunshun reported. The group's own accounting never recorded the money.
According to the election campaign expense report Mube submitted, the Liberal Democratic Party's Hokkaido No. 12 district branch, which he heads, donated a total of ¥15m to Mube personally in 2014 and about ¥15.27m in 2017. The branch's own political funding report contains no record of either donation.
Hiroyuki Uwajima, a professor at Kobe Gakuin University who specializes in the Political Funds Control Act, said the omission amounts to the crime of false entry under the law, Bunshun reported.
Mube's side acknowledged to Bunshun that there had been an error. The person in charge of the paperwork at the time has died, and the election commission's retention period for the documents has passed, so it cannot be confirmed whether a correction was ever made, his side said. It said the commission told it the records had already been discarded and could not now be corrected.
At a news conference after a cabinet meeting on November 2, Mube described the matter as an administrative mistake.
Comments single out the sum
Comments on Yahoo News took issue with the size of the money. One user wrote that a donation of more than ¥30m going unrecorded in a political funding report cannot be dismissed as a clerical error, and that if Mube denies a slush fund exists he should produce account records and ledgers to show where the money went.
The same commenter argued that the lapse of the retention period does not excuse him from explaining, and called it a serious problem that raises questions about his fitness to serve as agriculture minister.
Others questioned the practice of settling such matters with corrections and refunds. One said refunding the money or amending the reports does not discharge his responsibility, and called for a thorough third-party review and an explanation the public can accept.
The undeclared donations are among several funding problems reported around Mube. Bunshun said its electronic edition is carrying a third article on the matter, which confronts the group's accounting officer directly.