Former Minister Park Ji-Won Judged Not Guilty of 15 Billion Won Bribe

Supreme Court Second Division (chief judge : Justice Yoo Ji-Dam) broke the original sentence on Friday, November 12 of a 12-year term and a penalty fee of 14.85 billion won judged at the high court for former Culture and Tourism Minister Park Ji-won, who was charged and held in custody for receiving Hyundai’s slush fund of 15 billion won, and sent the case back to Seoul High Court.

The court announced in the judgment, “Kim Young-wan (abroad), (who was pointed out as former Minister Park’s fund manager), called his lawyer to a hotel outside the country and wrote out a written statement twice. However, how he came about to writing the statement and the way in doing so was abnormal, the details of the statements were dubious, and that the fact that all opportunities for the defendant to have a cross-examination were blocked makes the statement unusable as evidence.”

The court also said, “In the statement made by former Hyundai Securities Chairman Lee Ik-chi (on the part of stating the course of passing the 15 million won certificate of deposit to former Minister Park), many parts were unreasonable, and the time met with the defendant lacked consistency, losing credibility.”

However, Park’s charges for receiving 70 million won from SK Group, abuse of authority in the process of the illicit money transfer to North Korea, and violation of the foreign exchange transaction law and inter-Korea cooperation law were all judged to be guilty, following the original judgment.

Former Minister Park requested bail right after the Supreme Court’s judgment through his lawyer.

Meanwhile, the high court’s sentence for Choi Do-sul, former presidential secretary who was sentenced to a year and six months with a penalty fee of 1,559.46 million won for the illegal fund-raising of some 2.2 billion won for the 2002 presidential election and the partial use of it, was settled by the Supreme Court to follow the original sentence.

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