The satellite broadcasting business was a topic of conversation during a wining-and-dining scandal involving Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga's eldest son, who works for a broadcasting-related company, and Yoshinori Akimoto, director general of the information and communications bureau of the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry, according to the online version of the weekly Shukan Bunshun magazine on Wednesday.
The report included audio from the meeting, allegedly recorded from inside the restaurant, in which terms such as "BS" and "satellite" were used.
At a House of Representatives Budget Committee meeting on Feb. 10, Akimoto said, "I don't recall Tohokushinsha Film Corp.'s business coming up in conversation," and repeated the same claim at the committee meeting on Wednesday.
Hiroshi Moriyama of the Liberal Democratic Party and Jun Azumi of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, who are Diet affairs chiefs, met in the Diet on Wednesday and agreed to investigate the audio recording.
"If the voice [in the audio recording] is actually him, it means he lied," Azumi said.
-- Suga received millions from son's former boss
Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga revealed he had received donations from the former president of the broadcasting-related company where his eldest son works totaling 5 million yen between 2012 and 2018, at a House of Representatives Budget Committee meeting on Wednesday.
"The [donations] were received during the lower house election and it was a sympathy gift for the election," Suga said, indicating that accepting the donations was not a problem.
Suga also admitted to having dinner with the former president but said he had no recollection of discussing the company's satellite broadcasting business with him.
The Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry announced that the most recent dinner between Suga's son and Mabito Yoshida, Vice Minister for Policy Coordination, was Dec. 8.
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