Allegations that millions of dollars in fundraising was channelled into slush funds have triggered the resignation of four cabinet ministers in Japan.
Some $3.4m is alleged to have ended up in slush funds over a five-year period up to 2022, according to the BBC.
Tokyo prosecutors have also launched a corruption probe.
Chief Cabinet Secretary and top government spokesman, Hirokazu Matsuno, often seen as Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s right-hand man and the face of his government, was the most prominent of the four ministers. Economy and Industry Minister, Yasutoshi Nishimura, Internal Affairs Minister, Junji Suzuki and Agriculture Minister, Ichiro Miyashita, also stepped down on Thursday. They are all part of a powerful faction.
The BBC reports that this is the latest blow to Prime Minister Kishida’s increasingly unpopular government, whose approval ratings have plunged.
Public support for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has been in power almost continuously since 1955, fell below 30% for the first time since 2012, an NHK survey on Tuesday showed.
The faction, also known as the Seiwa policy group, allegedly failed to report hundreds of millions of yen in fundraising income. When their sales exceeded the quotas, members received the additional funds.
This, the BBC reports, would not violate Japanese law – but the allegations in the present case suggest that the additional revenue was kept off the books and instead went into slush funds.