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Ex-president's forfeited US assets returned
Justice Minister Kim Hyun-woong, left, receives a certificate of transfer for forfeited U.S. assets belonging to former Korean President Chun Doo-hwan, from his U.S. counterpart Loretta E. Lynch at the headquarters of the U.S. Justice Department in Washington D.C., Monday. / Yonhap
By Lee Kyung-min
By Lee Kyung-min
The U.S. Justice Department has handed $1.22 million collected from the sale of assets belonging to former President Chun Doo-hwan to Korea, the Ministry of Justice said Tuesday.
This is the first time that money laundered in the U.S. has been retrieved by Korea since the two countries signed an agreement on cooperation in criminal cases in 1997. It is also the first case in which the Ministry of Justice has successfully recovered assets of a high-profile public official hidden overseas. There was a previous case where the government recovered hidden money of an illegal gambling parlor operator from Mongolia is still underway.
According to the ministry, Justice Minister Kim Hyun-woong met with his U.S. counterpart, Loretta E. Lynch, at the headquarters of the U.S. Justice Department in Washington D.C. Monday and finalized the process to transfer the forfeited assets back to Korea. The U.S. then remitted the money to the account of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office.
Some of the assets were seized on two occasions last year ― $720,000 for selling a house of Chun’s son, Jae-yong, in Los Angeles in February, and a $500,000 investment by Chun’s daughter-in-law in August.
While engaged in a lawsuit with the Chun family, the Department of Justice reached a settlement with them to forfeit the assets in March this year.
The U.S. government’s move followed the Korean ministry’s request in 2013 to retrieve illegal gains accumulated by the former president, who came to power via a military coup.
In 1997, the Supreme Court convicted Chun of bribery and ordered him to return 220.5 billion won that he gained illegally while in office.
However, he has been delaying returning the money, saying he only had 290,000 won ($250) in his bank accounts.
As the statute of limitations for the forfeiture was to be over in 2013, the government had the related law revised to extend the statute and the prosecution set up a special team to collect on Chun’s property. According to the prosecution, only half the total amount, some 100 billion won, has thus far been retrieved. The justice ministry also asked the U.S. to find and seize the Chun family’s hidden assets in that country.
Saying that the retrieval was made possible through help from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Homeland Security Investigations, the ministry said that it would strengthen cooperation with key intelligence and investigative agencies in other countries in order to locate hidden overseas assets and retrieve them.
“We will closely cooperate with such agencies in order to discover and retrieve illegally amassed assets wherever they are hidden,” a ministry official said.