By Kang Shin-who
Staff Reporter
Prosecutors have started an investigation into 40 program directors at MBC, KBS and SBS for allegedly taking bribes from a large entertainment company. The prosecution is looking into the bank accounts of the producers in cooperation with financial regulators.
The probe comes as prosecutors are investigating MBC's ``PD Notebook'' for allegedly distorting and exaggerating the risks involving mad cow disease in a series of programs.
About 100 MBC producers held an emergency meeting Monday to denounce the probe, calling it politically-motivated oppression of the press. It is the first time in approximately 15 years that the association of MBC producers has convened a meeting.
According to the Seoul Central Prosecutors' Office, in 2005, the Fantom Entertainment Group offered producers some 800,000 shares in exchange for favoring their entertainers.
The company's initial stock worth of 300 won climbed to 43,000 won in just one year and the producers allegedly reaped huge gains. Another movie-making company is also suspected of having provided stocks to producers.
The prosecution plans to expand its investigation, suspecting more entertainment companies are involved in the alleged bribery cases.
Officials of the entertainment firm and dozens of TV producers from the nation's three main broadcasters are being investigated, with some of them banned from going overseas.
``Prosecutors are investigating as many as 40 producers. It's aimed to tame producers and thereby broadcasting companies as a whole,'' the MBC association's leader Kim Young-hee said.
Founded in 2005, Fantom Entertainment Group became one of the country's top three entertainment companies. However, the company was dragged into a stock market manipulation scandal in 2006 and the chairman of the company was given a prison sentence, which was overturned on appeal, last month.