The ruling Liberal Democratic Party admitted Wednesday it has given ¥20 million ($131,440) to local chapters where candidates have been denied official party endorsement over their involvement in the LDP's slush funds scandal, stirring up criticism of how the party has handled disgraced candidates in the tightest general election in years.

The LDP had previously said it would not back 12 of the party members involved in the scandal. Eight of the scandal-tainted candidates head LDP chapters of their own district but are running as independents, including former party policy chief Koichi Hagiuda.

The news was first reported on Wednesday in the Japanese Communist Party newspaper Shimbun Akahata.

LDP Secretary-General Hiroshi Moriyama said in a statement that the funding was provided to the local chapters to expand the party’s influence, not to support individual candidates.

In a statement the following day, the LDP vehemently denied that such a move is a de facto endorsement of the disgraced candidates, adding that all such funding was reported to the boards of elections in accordance with the law. It also said that those chapter heads who are also running as independents due to not being endorsed cannot use the funding for their own campaigns.

“This Akahata article distorts the facts and is extremely meticulous in leading to misunderstanding,” the statement said.

Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, who leads the ruling party, said Thursday that he was “angered” by the report, which he and his party called "misleading," stressing the funds were paid to the party chapters instead of the disgraced candidates themselves.

Ishiba had previously suggested his willingness to reinstate party endorsements to the candidates should they win in their elections, saying such an approach would “render the judgment to the electorate.”

Several candidates who were not endorsed by the LDP but whose chapters received the funds defended themselves, saying that they only realized the funds had been received after it was reported in the media. They added that the handout came at the worst possible time, since it was right before election day and it is a particularly tight race.

"To be frank, I can't help but question the criteria for withholding endorsements just before the election and how the leadership handled this grant," Hagiuda, who is running as an independent but still chairs the LDP chapter in Tokyo's No. 24 district, said in a video he posted on his campaign's X account on Thursday.

"Honestly, receiving such funds out of the blue is more of an unwelcome favor than anything else," he added.

Other candidates in similar situations said the same, including Kiyoshi Odawara of Tokyo's No. 21 district, who said he intends to return the money but that the party headquarters has declined to accept it.

Nevertheless, the latest disclosure has sparked a new round of criticism from opposition parties, with Yoshihiko Noda, leader of the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, saying he wasn’t surprised by the news at all.

“In the end, it’s effectively an endorsement,” Noda told reporters on a campaign stop in Yamaguchi Prefecture on Wednesday. “And even though they claim the candidate is not officially endorsed, the reality is that they haven’t changed at all and shown no remorse.”

Yuichiro Tamaki, leader of the Democratic Party for the People (DPP), called the LDP’s explanation “sophistry” in an X post on Wednesday.

An Asahi Shimbun poll earlier this week projected that the ruling LDP-Komeito coalition is at risk of failing to attain a 233-seat majority in the Lower House, something it has managed to achieve in every election since returning to power in 2012. The coalition held 288 seats before the dissolution of the Lower House, with 256 belonging to the LDP and 32 to Komeito.

Senior leaders of the DPP and Nippon Ishin no Kai have said they would not join the coalition to keep it in power.

This story was updated on Oct. 25, 2024 with remarks from LDP's Koichi Hagiuda and others.