Investigators questioned a Presidential Security Service employee Thursday as part of an independent counsel probe into suspicions surrounding a now-defunct project to build a retirement home for President Lee Myung-bak.
Special prosecutor Lee Kwang-bum is looking into allegations that President Lee's son gained illicit profit from last year's deal to buy land in southern Seoul jointly with the security service to build Lee's retirement home and security facilities there.
The security service official, Kim Tae-hwan, is accused of handling the questionable deal where the agency paid too high a price to buy its portion of the land in Naegok-dong on the southern edge of Seoul in what the opposition claims was a scheme to help Lee's son profit from buying the site at a below-market price.
Kim had been hired as a contract employee to take care of the project.
Details of his questioning were not made immediately public.
The presidential office has flatly rejected the suspicions the deal was a scheme to help the son profit. Lee later scrapped the project and decided to move into his existing private house in Nonhyun-dong in southern Seoul after leaving office.
The National Assembly approved the special investigation last month after prosecutors wrapped up an inquiry into the scandal in June without filing charges against anyone involved, saying all suspicions in the case had been resolved. (Yonhap)