Some of the Foreign Ministry's discretionary diplomacy funds were given to the Cabinet Secretariat every year despite legal restrictions on the transfer of budget funds between government organs, some government officials said Wednesday.
There were usually items in the annual budgets that read "for the Cabinet Secretariat" and "supplementary funds for the Cabinet Secretariat," the officials of the Foreign and the Finance ministries said.
Their remarks counter those made by Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori and Foreign Minister Yohei Kono, who have maintained that there has been strict budgetary separation between the ministry and the Cabinet Secretariat.