Shizuka Kamei, policy chief of the Liberal Democratic Party, asked the Finance Ministry in November 1999 to grant a request by the then Labor Ministry to increase a government subsidy for a university that was being promoted by the scandal-hit industrial insurer KSD, according to a top Finance Ministry bureaucrat.
Kamei, chairman of the ruling party's Policy Affairs Research Council, expressed his desire for the subsidy sought by the Labor Ministry to a Finance Ministry budget examiner in a telephone conversation, Vice Finance Minister Toshiro Muto said.
Kamei initially rang the number of the deputy chief of the ministry's Budget Bureau, who was absent, so a budget examiner in charge of Labor Ministry-related spending returned the call, Muto said.