Hatoyama Cabinet snubs civic request to disclose secret funds+

TOKYO, Dec. 3 Kyodo -
Despite its positive stance toward information disclosure, the administration
of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has rejected a request from a civic group
member to disclose specifics of the government's so-called secret funds for
September, the group said Thursday.

The group, named Seijishikin (political funds) Ombudsman, said it is poised to
file a suit with the Osaka District Court for a repeal of the government
decision not to disclose the requested information.
A co-leader of the group, Haruyuki Matsuyama, who is a qualified accountant,
made the request with the government and received a notice of its decision.
The notice says the government has decided not to disclose its spending records
that include for what and to whom money was paid because some of it, if
revealed, could cause Tokyo to ''harm relations of trust with parties such as
other countries and incur disadvantages in negotiations.''
The chief Cabinet secretary's account ledgers would not be unveiled because
''no facts exist to be documented,'' it also says, indicating no expenses were
made in September.
As for payment details of secret funds, which are required to be reported to
the Board of Audit, the notice says ''no documents were compiled as of Oct.
1,'' when Matsuyama filed the request for disclosure.
After Hatoyama took power and launched his Cabinet in mid-September, Chief
Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano took the rare step of revealing last month
that he had received 120 million yen in those confidential funds, or 60 million
yen on Sept. 24 and Oct. 14 each.
Hirano has also revealed that the Cabinet Secretariat received 1.2 billion yen
each year from fiscal 2004 through fiscal 2008, or roughly 100 million yen each
month from April 2004 through October this year, and that the sums were mostly
used up under the previous administrations.
==Kyodo