The ruling Liberal Democratic Party faction to which Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi once belonged is suspected of failing to submit official reports on details of funds distributed to its member lawmakers, sources said Saturday.
The practice went on for several years until recently, including the period it was nominally headed by Koizumi just before he became prime minister in 2001, the sources said.
The faction, currently led by former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, provides its member lawmakers with funds, with the amount estimated at 100 million yen a year. Details, however, of the money flow were not included in the group's funding reports from 1998 to 2003, according to the sources.