Japan's ex-LDP lawmaker banned from running in election for 5 years

Former ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lawmaker Takeshi Tokuda will be prohibited from running in a lower house election campaign in the Kagoshima Prefecture's No. 2 constituency for a period of five years, source revealed Monday.

Tokuda originally submitted his resignation to the lower house' s administrative office in late February to take account for his connection to illegal campaigning during his general election drive in December 2012.

Tokuda opted not to file an appeal against the ban preventing him from regaining his lower house seat for five years, as due to his resignation and surrounding political funding shambles, he would have been blackballed by the so-called guilt-by-association rules of the public offices election law.

The law states that no politician can run in the same constituency for five years if a senior campaigner for the politician is found guilty of violating the election law and slapped with a prison sentence, as was the case with Tokuda.

Tokuda's family run hospital chain known as the Tokushukai Group, which comprises some 60 hospitals and 280 medical facilities and is the biggest such conglomerate in Japan, has seen around 600 of Tokuda's campaigners suspected of netting a total of 150 million yen (around 1.5 million U.S. dollars) in illicit rewards for their campaigning services in 2012.

Tokuda, family members and some of the group's associates have been found guilty of paying inflated bonuses and providing gifts such as air tickets to cover the time thathundreds of Tokushukai employees spent campaigning on Tokuda's behalf, in direct contravention of the Public Offices Election Law, which prohibits payments from being made to campaigners and voters.

Tokuda's two elder sisters, his mother, at least two corporate affiliates and four members of medical facilities founded by the Tokushukai Group have been arrested for violating the election law.

Tokuda was first elected to the lower house in 2005 and succeeded his father in the Kagoshima Prefecture's No. 2 constituency. Prior to that served as his father's secretary for three years between 2002 and 2005.

Officials from the prosecutors office said that investigations will continue to establish definitively the extent to which Tokuda was involved in the election scandal.

Tokuda, following an unrelated scandal, resigned in February as parliamentary secretary in charge of infrastructure and transport, following revelations of an extramarital affair.