Park’s aide returns part of alleged illegal political funds: sources

A close aide to outgoing Parliamentary Speaker Park Hee-tae recently returned part of what Park allegedly took in illegal political funds from a private company during his winning 2008 bid to become chairman of the ruling Grand National Party, now renamed the Saenuri Party, prosecution sources said Monday.

The new findings came as Park, who resigned as the parliamentary speaker last week, is facing allegations that he took 200 million won ($178,300), possibly in illegal political funds, from the tourism-focused corporation Ramid Group.

Prosecutors suspect the money, which prosecutor-turned-politician Park said he received in legal fees, could have been used to fund Park's suspected bribery of lawmakers and party members to muster votes before winning the July 2008 election for the ruling party chairmanship.

The sources said prosecutors confirmed that Park's close aide, surnamed Hur, brought a 50 million won check back to a Ramid official at the end of January. The Ramid official has recently stated in a prosecution interrogation that the returned check was among 200 million won worth of checks given to Park ahead of the 2008 election, according to the sources.

It was reported earlier that the prosecutors tracking the money found that another 50 million won worth of checks were cashed out ahead of the party convention, possibly to fund Park's suspected bribe distribution.

Prosecutors are believed to suspect that either Hur returned the check to cover up part of the illegal funding allegations, possibly at Park's instruction, or the aide decided on his own to send back the unused check, the sources also said.

With the latest findings, prosecutors continue to widen their investigation into the vote-buying scandal. They said over the weekend that they will summon Kim Hyo-jae, who resigned last week as chief presidential secretary for state-affairs, on Wednesday over his suspected role in the bribery scheme. Kim was the policy monitoring chief for Park's 2008 election camp.

Kim allegedly took a key role in the distribution of bribes as part of Park's election campaign.

The outgoing parliamentary speaker said that he feels responsible for the scandal, asking for prosecutors' leniency on his aides who have been accused of wrongdoing.

"I have nothing to say. I deeply regret the case and I will assume all responsibility," Park said in a press conference held after he officially submitted a letter of resignation to the parliament following last week's resignation offer.

He also mentioned the longtime tradition of paying money to participants in a party convention, virtually admitting his cash distribution, which he had strongly refuted since the scandal broke out in early January.

"Party conventions are a kind of family party and they admittedly had many practices in breach of law," he told reporters. "It's also an undeniable fact that I spent quite heavily because I had to bring together so many people." (Yonhap)