Choi Il-Hong Involved in Lottery Business

Chairman of the National Sports Promotion Foundation Choi Il-hong has involved in the selection process of Tiger Pools International (TPI) as the sports lottery business operator in February last year, according to the second special investigative office of the Seoul District Public Prosecutor`s Office (SPPO) on May 29, which has gained some evidence and investigating on them.

The prosecution has secured circumstantial evince including several dozen occasions of telephone conversation of chairman Choi with CEO of TPI Song Jae-Bin right up to the selection of TPI as the lottery operator, and the prosecution is questioning Choi whether he had interfered in the process of selecting TPI as the operator while overriding the on-site survey results of the foundation pointing out the problems in TPI system.

The prosecution is further probing the credibility of an unconfirmed information that chairman Choi had gotten kickback by interfering in a regional sales headquarters operator selection process of the TPI lottery operation.

The prosecution filed an arrest warrant against chairman Choi in charge of receiving one hundred million Won in return for bestowing a favor to the system inspection process of LG-EDS, which has received a project order of an electronic data processing system of TPI in September last year.

According to the prosecution, former executive alias Kim of LG-EDS subcontracted some part of the project to other company to make a slush fund of one hundred million Won, which was delivered in cash to chairman Choi.

However LG-EDS denied flatly the allegation of bribery saying, `We have not bribed anybody in the foundation including chairman Choi.`

Additionally, the prosecution confirmed that some of the two hundred thousand shares of TPI owned by an executive of the company alias Kim have been sold, and it is probing the scale of exact amount of the selling and the expenditures.

The prosecution further secured testimony of executive Kim, `I am not owner of some of the stock,` and it is digging whether Mr. Song lobbied with the stock after taking it under a borrowed name, or who is the real owner of the stock. The prosecution is also investigating whether other high officials of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism have been bribed, aside from deputy vice minister Lee Hong-Seok who arrested in charge of taking 17 million Won from Song.

Sang-Rok Lee myzodan@donga.com