3 family members of Osstem embezzlement suspect booked on collusion suspicions
An employee of dental implant maker Osstem Implant only identified by his surname Lee is taken into Gangseo Police Station in Seoul, Jan. 6, after officers arrested him in Paju, Gyeonggi Province, the previous day for allegedly misappropriating 188 billion won ($157.7 million) of the company's funds. Yonhap
Police have booked three family members of a dental implant maker employee arrested for allegedly embezzling 221 billion won ($185 million) in company funds on suspicions of possible collusion.
Police were looking into whether the father, the wife and the sister-in-law of the 45-year-old Osstem employee, identified only by his surname Lee, played a part in the suspected crime, believed to be Korea's single largest embezzlement case.
Lee, who was arrested Saturday, allegedly used the embezzled money to buy 851 gold bars. Police have confiscated 755 of them, including 254 from three separate locations in connection with the father, Lee's wife and his sister.
The focus of the investigation of the three family members was on whether they took part in the suspected embezzlement or the stashing of criminal proceeds.
Officers at Paju Police Station in Paju, 30 kilometers north of Seoul, were also searching for Lee's father after the 69-year-old went missing earlier in the day, leaving a suicide note.
He was scheduled to face police questioning over suspicions he helped his son stash the embezzlement proceeds.
Osstem Implant, the country's largest dental implants manufacturer, has repeatedly emphasized that Lee had acted alone, but police suspect that the fund was too big to be stolen by the single team leader-level employee.
A day earlier, the company filed additional embezzlement charges against Lee, and separate ones of stashing criminal proceeds against Lee's family members, including the wife, his sister and sister-in-law. (Yonhap)