By Park Si-soo
Staff Reporter
The left-wing Democratic Labor Party (DLP) has been embroiled in an illegal political funds scandal.
The state prosecution and police said Wednesday it had found a suspicious multibillion won fund deposited in the DLP's bank accounts.
The finding came at a time when the prosecution is investigating allegations that unionized teachers and public servants had donated money to the party and were involved in its internal affairs, which are illegal acts.
A key DLP member faces arrest for allegedly hiding and destroying relevant evidence.
The prosecution has emphasized that the ongoing investigation is politically neutral, but many observers say it is intended to deal a blow to the anti-government party with the local elections just four months away.
According to the Seoul Central Prosecutors' Office, it recently found a suspicious sum of 5.5 billion won ($4.74 million) deposited in official bank accounts of the party.
It said the party has run three or four accounts not registered with the National Election Commission and has collected nearly 10 billion won from supporters through them since 2006.
"The deposited 5.5 billion won is confirmed to have been wired from unidentified accounts between August 2008 and October last year," said a prosecutor familiar with the case. "We believe it is part of an illegally collected 10 billion won."
The prosecution says the questionable funds are what unionized teachers and public servants "directly" wired to the party's secret accounts.
Under the current Political Funds Law, public officials can donate money to political organizations via the National Election Commission. It's also strictly banned for a party to have any accounts not registered with the election commission.
"This is apparently a tactic for money laundering," the prosecutor said. "We are widening our investigation to confirm whether the party has other secret accounts."
The prosecution found the suspicious accounts while monitoring the party's cash flows to check the allegation that hundreds of progressive teachers and public officials have donated money to the party on a regular basis and are engaged in its internal affairs.
The current law strictly bans public officials, including teachers, from participating in political activities.
Last Sunday, investigators raided an Internet company in Gyeonggi Province to seize computer servers for the party's Web sites, which allegedly contain a list of financial donors.
They obtained hard disks, but later learned that two other hard disks allegedly containing membership information went missing ahead of the raid.
Early this week, the prosecution arrested an employee of the company for hiding the disks ahead of the raid and issued an arrest warrant for Oh Byeong-yoon, a senior DLP official, for asking him to do so. Oh has since staged a sit-in at the party's headquarters in Yeouido, central Seoul, calling the raid a politically-motivated act aimed at suppressing the minor opposition party.
"It's obviously a politically-motivated scheme," Woo Wi-young, a DLP spokesman, said in a media briefing. "We will never bow to suppression. We will not cooperate with the investigation."