Lee Myung-baks In-Law Will be Summoned
By Kim Rahn
Staff Reporter
The prosecution will summon Kim Jae-jung, brother-in-law of Lee Myung-bak, leading presidential contender of the main opposition Grand National Party (GNP), Friday, following a libel suit Kim filed against aides of former GNP Chairwoman Park Geun-hye.
A Seoul prosecutor said Thursday that Kim would appear at the prosecution for questioning.
Kim said in the lawsuit that he was damaged over allegations that the former Seoul Mayor Lee and he were engaged in speculative real estate purchases between 1982 and 1995.
In verifying the defamation, the prosecution has launched a full-scale probe into Kim's property.
``It is not easy to trace money flow in real estate deals made such a long time ago, but we are investigating it through cooperation with the other government agencies,'' the prosecutor said.
The prosecution summoned several workers at DAS, a company owned by Lee's brother, and Hongeun Planning, a subsidiary of DAS in which Kim is the main shareholder, and Seoul City officials to question them about the city's alleged provision of favors to the companies.
``Lands in Cheonho-dong of eastern Seoul that Hongeun Planning had purchased were selected as a site for a new town, and the firm was picked to construct the site. We're probing whether the city government gave preference to the company and why car parts firm DAS was engaged in the real estate development business,'' the prosecutor said.
The prosecution is probing where all property information on the former Seoul mayor and his brother-in-law came from. The Lee camp claimed that pro-government Uri Party lawmakers and the Park camp used confidential personal information to defame the former Seoul mayor.
Prosecutors found that a worker at a judicial scrivener's office obtained resident registration records of Lee's brother, wife and brother-in-law through a credit information firm. The records were the same ones disclosed by five Uri Party lawmakers, against whom the GNP filed a suit last week for their unauthorized access to the information.
The prosecution also obtained access records to the classified information from four government agencies including the Ministry of Government Administration and Home Affairs and is tracing who leaked the information.