Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda admitted Wednesday that he failed to declare in political funding reports some 31 million yen that a scandal-tainted company shouldered as part of the salary for his chauffeur between 1996 and 2003.
"I'm taking a hard look at the facts," the top government spokesman told a news conference.
He said he had paid the chauffeur 3.6 million yen to 4.2 million yen annually from January 1996 to December 2003 but did not know that the company, Nihon Doro Koun, which dispatched the chauffeur to his office, had also paid him additional salary for the same period.