Prosecution zeros in on bribery allegations
By Kim Rahn
The prosecution officially started investigating bribery allegations involving conglomerates, President Park Geun-hye and her confidant Choi Soon-sil.
While Choi and former presidential secretary An Chong-bum have already been charged, President Park, now named an accomplice to the two, will also face bribery charges if the allegations are proven true.
Investigators from the prosecution’s special probe team raided Lotte and SK groups, Thursday, on suspicions that the government offered favors for their duty free business in return for money “donated” to two foundations controlled by Choi.
In the search warrant, the prosecution stated third-party bribery for the cause of the search. Third-party bribery is applied when a public official (in this case, Park) gets a request for influence-peddling and in return makes the requesters (conglomerates) provide money to a third party (Choi).
When indicting Choi and An last Sunday, prosecutors did not apply bribery charges but only abuse of power, extortion and attempted extortion. So the warrant showed prosecutors have officially added the bribery suspicions to their probe.
As a result, prosecutors said they need to question the President face-to-face. Park has refused this, but the prosecution has pushed ahead with requesting her to comply with the investigation by Tuesday.
Lotte and SK were eliminated from a re-approval evaluation for duty free licenses in November last year and have been seeking a second chance. It is suspected that Park pressured the groups to give money to the Mir and K-Sports foundations set up by Choi and promised license re-approval in return.
The President had one-on-one meetings with SK Chairman Chey Tae-won in February and Lotte Chairman Shin Dong-bin in March. After the meetings, the K-Sports Foundation requested 8 billion won from SK and 7.5 billion won from Lotte, in addition to billions of won the two groups had already provided to them.
In March, the Ministry of Strategy and Finance announced measures to ease approval requirements for duty free licenses. In April, the Korea Customs Service (KCS) also said it would open four new duty free shops in Seoul. The KCS is scheduled to announce the winner of the bidding in December.
Prosecutors raided the ministry and the KCS as well. They also summoned an SK official in charge of duty free business, Friday, over the alleged money-for-license deal.
Also summoned was former Health and Welfare Minister Moon Hyung-pyo, over allegations that he pressured the National Pension Service (NPS), which was a shareholder of Samsung C&T and Cheil Industries, to vote for their merger last year.
The merger benefited Samsung owner family members who were holding considerable stakes in Cheil. Prosecutors suspect the government, through Moon, pressured the NPS to vote for the merger giving a favor to Samsung, which provided the largest amount of money to the Mir and K-Sports.