TOKYO, March 18 -- NHK World issued the following news:
A former senior official of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party has denied involvement in the fundraising scandal bedeviling Japan's largest political party.
Former LDP policy chief Shimomura Hakubun was questioned at a meeting of the Lower House political ethics panel on Monday. He previously belonged to the faction once led by the late Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo.
Shimomura apologized, and told the panel the scandal had caused public distrust and skepticism of politics.
But he denied any knowledge of the faction's accounting practices. He said he was never consulted about faction members' financial reports, gave instructions to the faction's secretariat about accounting ma...