TOKYO, Aug. 4 (Xinhua) — Japanese ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lawmaker Masatoshi Akimoto resigned Friday amid allegations that he accepted bribes from a wind energy era firm, native media reported.
The 47-year-old fourth-term House of Representatives member proposed to step down from his present publish of parliamentary vice overseas minister, with the Foreign Ministry saying in a press launch that he had made a “request”, with out offering a selected cause, based on nationwide news company Kyodo.
Earlier within the day, Tokyo prosecutors searched his workplaces and his house, suspecting that Akimoto, a distinguished LDP advocate of renewable vitality, acquired bribes amounting to tens of hundreds of thousands of yen from the corporate Japan Wind Development Co., Kyoto reported citing sources near the matter.
His workplaces in Tokyo and Chiba Prefecture in addition to his house within the metropolis of Chiba had been searched.
Akimoto didn’t reply to questions from reporters at Haneda airport in Tokyo on Thursday when he returned from an abroad journey, Kyodo reported.
The lawyer for the corporate’s president denied the allegations, telling reporters Friday that the cash was for a racehorse cooperative arrange across the fall of 2021, and “was not provided to Mr. Akimoto.”
For a couple of 12 months via October 2018, Akimoto served as parliamentary vice minister on the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, the place he pushed for laws setting uniform guidelines for using the ocean by renewable vitality operators, in a bid to advertise offshore wind energy, native media studies confirmed.
The laws was enacted in November 2018.