A ruling coalition politician admitted Tuesday he allowed a construction firm that had links to gangsters to pay 2.75 million yen in salaries for his secretaries between March 1997 and February 1998.

House of Representatives member Kenshiro Matsunami of the New Conservative Party, one of the three ruling coalition partners, said he told the firm to stop paying the salaries after he discovered its chairman was a member of an underworld group.

Matsunami, in admitting he let the company pay the salaries, said he was immature as a politician and that he revised his political fund report early this month to include the payments.