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.

It is a major backer of the LDP, contributing 450 million yen to 590 million yen to the party's national fundraising body each year from 2000 to 2002.

It also provided in the same period financial assistance to about 120 lawmakers, most LDP members, in the form of donations or buying fundraising party tickets from their political bodies, according to political funds reports.

According to the latest findings, a total of 33.6 million yen said to have been donated to the 18 former or incumbent lawmakers has not been recorded in their political funds reports.

Two political bodies for Kato, a former LDP secretary general, failed to report a total of 2 million yen in donations by the JDA's political organization.

A political body for Nakano, a former secretary general of the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan, failed to report 500,000 yen in its papers.

Yoshio Kimura, Shunichi Suzuki, Tsutomu Sato and Takeshi Noda, all LDP lawmakers, have also corrected their reports after finding that their political bodies failed to report between 500,000 and 5 million yen donated by the JDA.

According to a political funds report, Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare Chikara Sakaguchi is said to have been given 1 million yen by the association. But his office said, ''That is a mistake.''

Sakaguchi is a leading member of the New Komeito party, the coalition partner in the LDP-led coalition.

A political funds report says Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Yoshiyuki Kamei, also in the LDP, was given 3.5 million yen more than he reported.

But Kamei's office said, ''There are no mistakes in the reporting by our side.''

Meanwhile, a representative of the JDA's political arm said, ''We cannot confirm (the allegations) as we currently have no documents available.''

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