Utility executives big political donors in Japan

Source: AP

TOKYO (AP) - Japanese utility company executives were by far the biggest individual donors to Japan's former ruling party during its last year in power, accounting for a whopping 72 percent of personal contributions, a news report said.

While the donations amounted to only a small fraction of the Liberal Democratic Party's operations fund, the revelation is likely to add to questions surrounding connections between power companies and politicians amid the nuclear disaster in northeastern Japan set off by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

Executives from nine utility companies contributed 47 million yen ($595,000) to the Liberal Democratic Party in 2009, Kyodo News agency reported. That's nearly three quarters of the nearly 65 million yen ($823,000) received in 2009 in total individual donations to the party.

Among the donors were executives with Tokyo Electric Power, which operates the radiation-spewing reactors at Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant. The crisis is the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20110723/D9OL7J500.html