Shizuka Kamei, chairman of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's Policy Research Council, asked the former Labor Ministry to increase government subsidies for a technology institute affiliated with the scandal-hit mutual aid foundation KSD, an official of the ministry said Wednesday.
"The ministry was asked by Mr. Kamei at the end of November 1999," Hideyuki Sakai, chief of the ministry's Human Resources Development Bureau, now part of the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry, told the House of Councilors Committee of Audit.
Sakai was responding to a question from Mitsuru Sakurai, an Upper House member of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, as to whether any politicians had requested a subsidy increase.