Former Japanese Justice Minister Katsuyuki Kawai enters the Tokyo District Court on March 23, 2021. (Pool photo)
TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Documents related to a high-profile case of vote buying by former Japanese Justice Minister Katsuyuki Kawai are expected to be returned to him soon by prosecutors, sources close to the matter said Thursday.
The documents include details on what led the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's headquarters to provide an unusually large sum of 150 million yen ($1.4 million) for the campaign of his wife, Anri, 47, who ran in the House of Councillors election in July 2019.
The party's response will be closely watched as a senior LDP official has said the documents will be used to prove that the money was not used to fund vote buying.
The Tokyo District Court last Friday sentenced Kawai, 58, to three years in prison and a forfeiture of 1.3 million yen for handing out a total of 28.7 million yen to 100 local assembly members and supporters in his wife's constituency in Hiroshima Prefecture, western Japan.
But the ruling did not touch on the 150 million yen provided to her camp ahead of the 2019 upper house election.
According to the sources, Kawai, who has appealed the ruling, requested the return of the related documents himself. Prosecutors are believed to have deemed that the documents would not hurt their case during the appeal hearing.
The Kawais left the LDP shortly before they were arrested in June 2020 and resigned as lawmakers this year.
During his trial, Kawai denied the 150 million yen was used to fund vote buying, saying "not a single yen was used" for that. He said the money had been used to pay for a party bulletin produced for the election and he had used his own funds to buy votes.
While prosecutors appear to have come to the same conclusion, a senior prosecutor has said that the LDP funds may have indirectly funded the vote buying as Kawai "was only able to use his own funds because he had (that) money."
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