Ex-justice minister, lawmaker wife indicted for suspected vote-buying

Aah yes, and they also collected their summer bonus just like Abe and everyone else in the government while the masses struggle through disaster and pandemic.

@ Yubaru.

taking responsibility for ones actions is not the Japanese way though. Deny, deflect find a scapegoat anything but standing up and admitting they were wrong. Unless you include the deep bow/then back to business bull we often see.

Their arrest and indictment are a blow to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as the premier struggles with falling public support. Katsuyuki Kawai had close ties to Abe and previously served as his foreign policy adviser.

Abe is a hypocrite, as leader of the LDP he is ultimately the one responsible for the actions of his underlings here. He made a half-arsed apology on TV yesterday about this, and skirted the issue of his responsibility in the entire matter.

Does anyone know if they are still in detention?

Wouldn't want them talking to each other or destroying evidence , would we?

gary

This amount of 1.7 million yen is a joke. Everyone knows that Abe and the LDP sent them more than 125 million yen to "ahem, cough cough" help with the election campaign of Anri Kawai. That was the money that was distributed and I wish the prosecutors could make that connection, but the shredders are working overtime in the LDP headquarters to get rid of that information.

I am sure no time locked up with bail and suspended sentence. Very different rules for the Japanese elite.

Wonder who they annoyed, usually this level of people are protected, they received a ton of money from the PM, the LDP. They must be obnoxious even by the obnoxious standards of the LDP.

Lock up the whole rotten self serving political elite and bureaucratic idiots, sterilisation (that was thir idea) for them all start afresh with normal working people who can run a household debt free. And care about happiness and children.

you guys have pretty much summed up everything I have to say and then some. I concur.

With the behaviour of Abe and his LDP cohorts I find it highly ironic that it was his party that brought 'moral education' the the nation's public schools.

It seems that 'immoral education' would have been a more appropriate title.

They are stuffed. They can’t skip bail.

But maybe, the old brown envelope trick might work?

"Ex-Justice Minister", oh the irony...

If Abe's top prosecutor hadn't been forced to resign following the mahjong scandal, would the indictment have been made?

there can be no justice in a country where the minister of justice and his lawmaker wife engage in criminal behavior

Lock them both away for life

I wish some of that money had come to me. But then, I can't vote. The whole vote buying law is bogus anyway. Once in the booth, no one knows who you are voting for. I say abolish the law. Throwing good money after bad.

There is a bus ticket soaking in a glass of water somewhere ready for when the punishment is about to be dispensed.

ex minister of justice..shameful!