The Tokyo District Public Prosecutor’s Office has dropped charges against 65 current and former Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers and their secretaries, including Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and senior members of a faction once led by former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, of violating the political funds control law.

With the decision, the LDP hopes to turn the page on the scandal, which heavily damaged public trust in the party and led to the LDP-Komeito ruling coalition losing its majority in the Oct. 27 Lower House election.

The charges stemmed from a kickback scheme involving funds collected through individual LDP faction member's sale of tickets to political fundraising parties. Money received beyond a quota was then funneled back to the member by the faction but kept off the books, in violation of the law.

Prosecutors previously charged 11 lawmakers and their secretaries, though criminal complaints have been submitted against dozens of others by at least one citizens` group.

But they decided Thursday not to indict five people connected to a faction previously led by Ishiba, including the prime minister himself as well as the group’s accountants, due to insufficient evidence.

Prosecutors also decided not to charge 16 present and former lawmakers that belonged to the Abe faction — which was at the center of the scandal — as well as 44 of their accountants and secretaries.

Following Abe’s assassination in July 2022, his faction was run by a committee of five senior leaders, including former Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno and former Reconstruction Minister Tsuyoshi Takagi.

While Matsuno and Takagi avoided indictment due to a lack of evidence, prosecutors nevertheless suspect that five other parliamentarians had violated the law but decided not to charge them for reasons that were not immediately clear.

The Ishiba and Abe factions — legal entities that provide support to their members — were dissolved earlier this year in the wake of the scandal, along with those led by former LDP Secretary-General Toshihiro Nikai, former Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, former Secretary-General Toshimitsu Motegi and current Secretary-General Hiroshi Moriyama.

A faction belonging to Taro Aso, a former prime minister and LDP president, was not caught up in the slush funds scandal and remains intact.

But as punishment for their role in the scandal, both Matsuno and Takagi were forced to defend their district seats in the October Lower House election without official LDP backing, which deprived them of an avenue to return to parliament under proportional representation in the event of a loss.

Matsuno won his Chiba district, but Takagi lost his Fukui seat.