Senior members of Japan's main ruling Liberal Democratic Party have given their explanations about a fundraising scandal that has rocked Japanese politics.

Former economy and industry minister Nishimura Yasutoshi and former Chief Cabinet Secretary Matsuno Hirokazu spoke at the Lower House Deliberative Council on Political Ethics on Friday.

Nishimura and Matsuno are former secretaries general of the Liberal Democratic Party's largest Abe faction. They apologized for causing distrust in politics over the fundraising scandal involving the faction, but denied they were involved in any accounting procedures.

Nishimura said the head of the secretariat was in charge of accounting, and other senior officials, especially the secretary general, were not involved. He said he presumes ticket sales for fundraisers and sales quotas for faction members were decided by the chairperson of the faction and the head of the secretariat. He said he does not know any details about the accounting.

Nishimura was asked about the so-called kickbacks in which faction members allegedly received money from ticket sales that exceeded their quotas. He said he believes the practice began as a measure to support the political activities of young lawmakers, but he does not know when it started.

Nishimura said it was a customary practice that continued for a long time by chairpersons and heads of the secretariat, but other senior officials were not involved.

A former head of the Constitutional Democratic Party, Edano Yukio, asked about a meeting of senior officials of the faction in 2022, after the death of former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo. Abe had expressed his intention to end the practice of kickbacks.

Edano said there is a testimony that the meeting proposed ways to legally report kickbacks in political funds reports. He asked if Nishimura made this proposal. Edano said Nishimura must have known that it was illegal not to report kickbacks.

Nishimura responded that the meeting did not discuss if the refunds were legal or illegal, and there were no discussions about political fund reports. He said that a proposal was made for the faction to buy tickets for fundraisers hosted by lawmakers as one of the options for faction members who asked for refunds.

Matsuno also said he was not involved in accounting related to the faction's party ticket sales.

Matsuno said that during his term as the faction's secretary general, he was not aware of any ticket sales quotas for lawmakers and did not know about kickbacks. He said he did not know how revenues from party ticket sales were processed, including whether they were listed in political funds reports.