7 lawmakers found not to have registered funds bodies+

TOKYO, March 6 Kyodo -
Seven lawmakers failed to register their funding organizations for more than a
year in line with a Political Funds Control Law provision introduced in 2007,
indicating a potential flaw in the revised law designed to improve
transparency, Kyodo News investigations showed Saturday.

Failure to register these organizations as associated with lawmakers does not
in itself incur any penalty, although officials of these lawmaker-associated
organizations are liable to imprisonment of up to five years or a maximum fine
of 1 million yen if they fail to present an audit report.
The offices of all seven lawmakers including three incumbents said they were
prepared to undergo an audit and denied that failure to file for registration
was intended to circumvent an audit.
The office of Naoki Tanaka, one of the seven and an incumbent House of
Councillors member of the Democratic Party of Japan, said, ''We naturally
assumed filing (for registration) had been done. Filing has fallen behind as
the people in charge kept changing.''
Under the 2007 provision, Diet members were required to register their
organizations for political funds management and the local chapters of
political parties they head with prefectural election management committees by
the end of 2008.
Those organizations that support lawmakers and election candidates were also
required to be registered to become eligible to provide tax breaks to donors.
Kyodo News conducted investigations with the local election boards concerning
those who were members of parliament at the end of 2008. They had 3,201
organizations registered.
The seven lawmakers did not even register their fund management bodies as those
associated with lawmakers even as of 2010.
Besides Tanaka, the six others are from the Liberal Democratic Party. They are
two incumbents -- House of Representatives member Ryu Shionoya and upper house
member Yoshio Nakagawa -- and four former lower house members -- Satuski
Katayama, Nobuko Iwaki, Tadahiko Ito and Tokuichiro Tamazawa.
Ito's office said, ''We were aware a funding body falls under the category of
lawmaker-associated political organizations but we did not know we had to make
filing anew.''
An election management official of one prefecture said, ''It is almost
impossible to believe that a member of parliament who is in a position to
legislate the Political Funds Control Law 'did not know' (about such a
requirement).''
''It is an institutional flaw to disregard failure to register,'' Tomoaki Iwai,
political science professor at Nihon University, said. ''It could even happen
that an organization would not retain receipts for expenditures of one yen or
more and escape an audit if no registration is made.''
Registered lawmaker-associated organizations have been required to retain all
receipts for expenses of one yen or more since 2009.
==Kyodo
2010-03-06 23:18:11