Prosecutors indicted a total of 34 individuals on Monday, including local assembly members in western Japan’s Hiroshima Prefecture, over vote-buying by former Justice Minister Katsuyuki Kawai for his wife in the 2019 Upper House election, reversing their initial decision.
Kawai has been convicted of handing out a total of ¥28.7 million to 100 local assembly members and supporters in his wife Anri’s constituency in Hiroshima in an attempt to buy votes.
In July 2021, prosecutors dropped the bribery case against all 100 individuals. But they overturned the decision after an inquest panel comprised of citizens said in January that 35 people should be indicted.
Among the 34 whom prosecutors took action against, nine were indicted without arrest, while 25 faced summary indictments. Prosecutors did not bring charges against the 35th person, a Hiroshima Municipal Assembly member who suffers from ill health.
If the local assembly members who were indicted Monday are found guilty and their convictions are finalized, they would be stripped of their assembly seats and become ineligible to hold public office.
Kawai, who belonged to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, was sentenced in June last year to three years in prison and a forfeiture of ¥1.3 million by the Tokyo District Court over the vote-buying.
His wife, Anri, was sentenced in January last year to a 16-month prison sentence, suspended for five years, for conspiring with her husband and giving ¥1.6 million in total to four Hiroshima Prefectural Assembly members. She lost her seat as her election win was nullified following the ruling.
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