Japan's former Your Party chief's funding scandal to be reinvestigated

Tokyo prosecutors will reinvestigate a funding scandal case involving the former head of the disbanded opposition Your Party, Yoshimi Watanabe, after an independent judicial panel of citizens on Monday found the initial inquest and verdict to be unsound.

The Tokyo No. 1 Committee for the Inquest of Prosecution who handed down their decision not to indict on Oct. 22 will have their inquest reinvestigated, following their initial decision not to indict Watanabe in January this year.

The original probe followed allegations Watanabe knowingly concealed from the party's annual political funds reports 800 million yen (around 6.65 million U.S. dollars) in accumulative loans from Yoshiaki Yoshida, chairman of cosmetics maker DHC Corp.

Watanabe had testified that the loans from Yoshida were made to him on a personal basis and not to his party, but the independent panel has suggested that in fact the loans may well have been made to the party itself.

It was Yoshida himself who first brought the case to light in March 2014, saying that Watanabe had borrowed 800 million yen from him before the December 2012 general election.

Yoshida said that Watanabe, who subsequently lost his lower house seat last December, sent an e-mail requesting the loan saying that his party's campaign needed bailing out. Watanabe, however, maintains the subsequent wiring of funds were purely "personal loans."

Watanabe, who at the time was a sixth-term lower house member, was investigated for possibly violating the Political Funds Control Law or the Public Offices Election Law, but was not indicted as prosecutors decided he had not used any of the money for political activities.

The cosmetics executive, however, at the time, said he had bank transaction details that prove the loans and Watanabe's violation of the election law.

Yoshida had said he started to become disgruntled with Watanabe's policy issues in 2013 and decided to stop funding the politician and the party.

Watanabe formed Your Party as a splinter from the (now ruling) Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) before the 2009 general election, but the party disbanded in November 2014 as some members felt their policies were aimed at cozying up to the LDP.

Watanabe left the party in April 2014 as the funding scandal began to attract increasing legal attention and public and political scrutiny.

If the prosecutors decide Watanabe is not culpable again, the case will be permanently dropped. Enditem