Kim Young-wan to Be Deported Soon

The central investigation agency under the Supreme Public Prosecutor`s Office will have the suspect behind the money-laundering incident Kim Young-wan deported to the nation as early as possible.

The prosecution has reportedly reviewed various ways to have him back - first proving his count of tax evasion and then claiming his repatriation to the nation concerned or trying to force him to come back to Korea by seizing his properties.

The fact that the prosecution decided to have him back while tracking down related bank accounts can be interpreted as its strong determination to launch an active investigation against this incident even before a new special prosecution team is launched.

Background of early repatriation plan

An official from the prosecution said on July 9th, “We will have to wait and see how the newly-passed special prosecution bill could be dealt with at a plenary session on July 11th”, not confirming the plan to have Kim repatriated to the country.

But, it seemed that the prosecution made a decision that other cases except for the Hyundai secret money scandal should be dealt with by itself considering that the short period of time (60 days) and other limitations given to a special prosecution team.

In fact, there has been a loud voice saying that the investigation would come to no avail if the suspect Kim was not interrogated. That made the prosecution consider a way to have him back as early as possible.

Elaborate tracking of accounts

The investigation team is reviewing the flow of the secret money with the materials provided by the special prosecution team for the “North Korea money remittance incident”.

However, there is much difficulty in figuring out the exact usage of the money since Kim had been so careful in money-laundering while some of the money had been cashed.

The team is starting from the initial point of two sets of CDs worth 10 billion won with few materials that it can refer to.

For 4 billion won worth of CDs, it has been figured out that Kim ordered a private money lender to launder the money. But another cache of 5 billion won in secret money was also discovered from his account making the situation more complicated.

The team also checked out that Kim purchased housing bonds using the 1 billion won worth of CDs in early May, 2000, but the issuance number of the bonds was different from that of the bonds stolen from his house last March, making it impossible to track down the whereabouts of the money.

Will Kim be back?

The prosecution plans to go through several processes to get him back to the nation : proving his criminality, trying to get him back during the investigation period and then forcing him to be deported to the country based on the criminal surrendering cord.

The prosecution plans to focus on proving his criminal accounts to invalidate his passport and seize his properties.

It seems that a considerable amount of time will be needed before he could be put in court even though the prosecution demands for his repatriation.

An official from the investigation team said, “It is true that there are many obstacles but he might be unexpectedly coming back when our hidden card is played out.”