TOKYO: Prosecutors have asked Japan’s former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to report for voluntary questioning in a case they are building against his secretary over unreported political funds involving as much as 40 million yen ($382,848), media said on Thursday.
Ex-premier Abe, who stepped down due to ill-health in September, is under fire after sources told media his office helped cover the costs of dinner parties for supporters, a possible violation of funding laws that conflicts with Abe’s vehement denials in parliament last year.
The scandal also threatens to embroil Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, who was widely seen as Abe’s right-hand man during his tenure and has defended him in parliament.
Abe’s secretary is quoted as telling investigators that the income and expenditures “should have been included in the political funding report” though “it was common practice not to,” according to the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper.
Abe himself has been asked by Tokyo prosecutors…