Lee Gwang-Jae Provided 100 Million Won To President Roh’s Camp

The Central Investigation Bureau at the Supreme Public Prosecutor’s Office verified the suspicion that Lee Gwang-Jae, former close aide to President Roh, had accepted 150 million won from Sun & Moon Group on November 11. The prosecution decided to request an arrest warrant against Lee on November 12.

Mr. Lee had been suspected of accepting 100 million won in illegal political funds from Moon Byoung-wook, the chairman of Sun & Moon Group and President Roh’s high school classmate who was a year behind him in school. The funds were allegedly provided to President Roh’s campaign during the presidential election. In addition, he accepted five million won from the vice-president of Sun & Moon, Kim Sung-nae, who is now in jail.

The prosecution plans to inflict criminal punishment for violating the political funding law after investigating whether or not Mr. Lee asked for and accepted the political funds. In addition, the prosecution is now investigating why Mr. Lee totally denied to congress about accepting illicit funds from Sun & Moon.

It has been reported that Mr. Lee insisted, “Chairman Moon handed over checks to people related to the party, saying the funds was to be used for the MDP’s presidential campaign, but there seemed to be some problems with the receipt.”

“I was planning to confess when these problems occurred, but I was not courageous. One hundred million won can seem like a small amount of money, but it is a large sum to the common people. So I am concerned about that,” Mr. Lee said via an email to journalists before going to face the prosecution in the morning.

The prosecution also made it clear that former vice-president Kim received 200 million won from Chairman Moon last November and provided them to Hong Ki-hoon, chairman of a pharmaceutical company, saying the funds should be given to Rep. Seo Chung-won of the GNP. The prosecution is now in the process of confirming whether the funds were actually delivered to Rep. Seo.

Meanwhile, the prosecution plans to request an arrest warrant against Rep. Choi Don-woong of the GNP, who has refused to be summoned on charges of violating the political funding law in December.

According to the prosecution, Rep. Choi is also suspected of involvement in collecting 40 billion won in illegal presidential campaign funds from major conglomerates including Samsung, LG and SK.

The prosecution added, “We took actions against those representatives of the MDP who were involved in raising the illegal political funds to prevent them from leaving the country.”

Either today or tomorrow, the prosecution also plans to summon Lee Ki-myoung, the then chief of the aide association for President Roh, as a witness in order to clarify whether or not the 1.9 billion won that chairman Kang Keum-won of Changshin Textile Inc. Ltd in Busan provided to Lee Ki-myoung for the purchase of his land in Yongin was, in fact, illegal political funds.

Wi-Yong Jung viyonz@donga.com