‘Cherry Blossom Ending’?…Japanese prosecutors decide against former Prime Minister Abe

Japanese prosecutors filed an unprosecution for allegations of illegal entertainment provided by former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. As a result, the so-called’cherry blossom scandal’ workshop, which has been continuing for more than a year, is more likely to end.

At the Japanese National Assembly on the 24th of last month, former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe answers questions from reporters. [교도=연합뉴스]

The Tokyo District Prosecutors’ Office, which is investigating the case, has been unprosecuting Prime Minister Abe on the 24th for insufficient charges, according to Japanese media such as Jiji News on the 24th. A non-prosecution is a decision by the prosecutor not to file a prosecution against the accused or accused suspect.

The prosecution also briefly prosecuted Haikawa Hiroyuki, the representative of the Shinzo Abe Sponsorship, who hosted the eve of the cherry blossom meeting, and the first secretary of the public announcement, etc., for violating the Political Fund Regulation Act.

From 2013 to last year, former Prime Minister Abe held a government-sponsored “Sakura Watching Meeting” every April in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Gyoen. On the eve of the event held at a luxury hotel the day before the event, a large number of supporters from Yamaguchi Prefecture, a local district, were invited, and they paid a participation fee of 5,000 yen (about 53,000 won) per person for food and other reasons.

However, the minimum event fee for this hotel is around 11,000 yen (about 117,000 won) per person, and the core of the suspicion is that former Prime Minister Abe’s side compensated for the insufficient cost.

The controversy arose in October of last year, but the investigation began in May this year when civic groups and others accused former Prime Minister Abe and other people around the prosecution. The Tokyo District Prosecutors’ Office, through a statement issued by the hotel, revealed that the Shinzo Abe Sponsorship had paid for the insufficient cost.

According to the prosecution, the sponsoring association did not properly record the dues received from the participants and the maintenance costs of the sponsoring association in the political fund balance report submitted to the election commission. The amount of the identified omissions amounted to a total of 30.22 million yen (approximately 322 million won) from 2016 to last year, when the data remained on the NEC. Of these, the amount Abe preserved was about 7 million yen (about 7453 million won).

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe greets the attendees at the’Cherry Blossom Meeting’ held in Shinjuku Gyoen in April last year.[사진제공=지지통신]

The Tokyo District Prosecutors’ Office investigated officials in Abe’s office to confirm the allegations, and on the 21st, it called the former Prime Minister Abe directly to investigate the involvement. At this meeting, Prime Minister Abe is known to have claimed that he did not know that he had compensated for the difference and that he did not include it in the financial report.

The prosecution said, “There is no evidence to admit that Abe was involved in this case.” “It seems that it is difficult to hold responsibility (to former Prime Minister Abe) because even the secretary who was briefly prosecuted denied Abe’s involvement,” Jiji said.

However, there is growing criticism that the prosecution actually closes the case in the form of “cutting the tail,” in which the former prime minister does not touch and only punishes the secretary. The first opposition party, the constitutional Democratic Party’s Constitutional Democratic Party’s Chairman of the National Assembly Countermeasures Committee, strongly criticized “This is a result that is not convincing at all. It will be a stain on the Japanese constitutional history.” Akira Koike, the secretary of the Japanese Communist Party, also pointed out that former Prime Minister Abe has given different answers from the facts in the National Assembly so far.

As a result of analyzing the responses made by former Prime Minister Abe at a total of 33 meetings, including the Plenary Meeting of the Middle and House of Representatives and the Budget Committee, from November of last year to March of this year, a’false response’ different from the results of the prosecution investigation. It was found that a total of 118 cases were performed.

Prime Minister Abe held a press conference on the evening of the 24th to reveal his position. On the 25th, he will attend the National Assembly and explain the circumstances. The Japanese media predicted that they would apologize for the fact that they did not know the facts and omissions of information on the eve of the supporters’ meeting, and that their responses to the National Assembly would eventually turn out to be’false’.

Tokyo = Correspondent Lee Young-hee [email protected]