TOKYO, Feb. 28 Kyodo The amount of donations given by the political arm of the Japan Dental Association (JDA) to 16 lawmakers and two former legislators does not match with sums recorded in their political funds reports, Kyodo News found Saturday. Political funds recipient bodies for six lawmakers out of the 18, including those for Koichi Kato, a Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) member, and Kansei Nakano, vice speaker of the House of Representatives, have corrected their reports after finding they had misreported.

On Feb. 2, prosecutors searched the offices of the political arm of the JDA, a major contributor of funds to the LDP, over the alleged violation of the Political Funds Control Law. The JDA's political arm -- known as Japan dentist league -- is suspected of making a total of 20 million yen in donations intended for Yukihiro Yoshida, a former House of Representatives member, on three occasions between May 2001 and August 2002, but did not report it to the authorities as required under law, according to prosecutors.

The JDA, which counts just over 70% of all dentists in Japan as members, is not established as a political organization and is thus barred from making political donations. It set up its political arm, which currently has about 50,000 members who contribute membership fees totaling 1.8 billion yen a year..