Ex-LDP lawmaker Manabu Horii indicted over two money cases

The Tokyo District Public Prosecutor’s Office on Thursday summarily indicted Manabu Horii, a former House of Representatives lawmaker from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, over two separate money cases.
The Tokyo Summary Court on the same day fined him ¥1 million ($6,900) and suspended his civil rights for three years.

According to the indictments, Horii, 52, allegedly distributed a total of ¥380,000 in condolence money and other funeral offerings worth ¥230,000 to 52 voters in his constituency in Hokkaido through his secretaries between October 2021 and October 2023, in violation of the public offices election law.
Horii is also charged with violating the political funds control law by failing to include a total of ¥17.14 million in his political group’s financial statements for 2019 to 2021. He received the money from an LDP faction he belonged to. The faction, once led by former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, is at the center of a high-profile slush fund scandal involving LDP factions.
In the slush fund scandal, public prosecutors had not indicted LDP lawmakers whose unreported funds were less than ¥30 million. But they decided to indict Horii after determining that his case was especially malicious, because he may have used such funds for funeral offerings.
Horii, a former speed skater who won bronze at the 1994 Lillehammer Winter Olympics, was first elected to the Lower House in 2012 and has since served four terms.
He said in June that he would not seek reelection in light of the slush fund scandal. He quit the LDP in July amid allegations of the election law violation and resigned as a Lower House member on Wednesday.